After she had put it on, Ivy looked at the reflection of herself in the long narrow panel of looking-glass set in the wall at right angles from the window. Yes, the dress was charming, and looked just right.
She ran across to a walnut-wood chest, and took out of it the hat she had bought yesterday. For the first time, since she had come into the flat last night, she smiled. The little hat was so chic, really chic! And it made her look so—well, why not say it to herself?—so absolutely lovely.
Slowly, reluctantly, she took off the hat, and then she went into the drawing-room.
The blinds were still drawn down. How strange! Then she remembered why they were drawn down.
She wandered about the room, feeling just a little dazed. Should she telegraph for Roger Gretorex? It was so stupid of his mother to have given up the telephone. No one could be so poor as that; it was just meanness and affectation! But if she wired she knew he would come back at once. She also knew that she could trust him to take off her shoulders all worrying, maybe even unpleasant, arrangements.
And yet the fact that she was now a widow would certainly make Roger “tiresome.” So unfortunately certain was this that she felt it better to leave him alone, at any rate for the present. Also she was a little afraid of seeing him just now. After all, owing to his being a doctor, he had such an uncanny knowledge of—of poisons, and of their effect on the human body.
She sat down; then she got up again, and at last she began moving about restlessly.
Suddenly she told herself that she might as well sit down and write to Miles Rushworth. It could be quite a short letter. He would of course remember that in her very last letter she had said that poor Jervis was worse, and that she was feeling anxious.
She wondered how long it takes for a letter to get to South Africa. And then with a sensation of relief came the thought that she could cable. It would be quite natural for her to do that as, after all, her husband had been in Rushworth’s employment.
She went over to the writing-table, and, sitting down, drew a telegraph form towards her. She would write it out, and then take it herself to the post office. She didn’t feel, somehow, like sending a cable to Rushworth over the telephone. That is the worst of living in a flat. Everything one says may be overheard, especially from the hall.
But instead of taking up a pen, she put her elbows on the table and gazed in front of her.
There had suddenly come over her a most unexpected sensation of loneliness. Oh, if she had one good man friend who wasn’t in love with her, and who would help her through the next few days! She did so shrink from—from everything. Laying her head on the table, she began to sob with self-pity.
The door opened, and the nurse came in. Ivy looked up.
“I’m so miserable! So miserable! I don’t know what to do!”
“Don’t you worry about anything, Mrs. Lexton. Dr. Berwick will be round pretty soon. I telephoned to his house just now, and left a message for him. Mrs. Berwick was shocked to hear our dreadful news. She said she was expecting the doctor back any minute now. I expect Dr. Gretorex will be in some time today, too. Surely he’ll see to all the things that have to be done.”
“All the things?” Ivy looked timorously at Nurse Bradfield, and shivered.
The other saw her look of dismay. “Poor little thing,” she said to herself, “she’s not much more than a child, after all.”
Aloud she said, “I thought of going out presently. Not for long”—fear had flashed into Ivy’s face—“only just for a few minutes.”
She added kindly: “I shouldn’t try to write, if I were you, Mrs. Lexton. I’d just lie down and have a rest. I don’t suppose you’ve had much sleep?”
Ivy answered plaintively, “I lay awake all night. You see it was such a shock, nurse, such a dreadful shock,” and she thought that what she said was true.
In a way it had been a dreadful shock, for Ivy had never come face to face with death. She had been still a pupil at a fashionable school when her father had killed himself.
The nurse led her to the comfortable sofa. “You lie down here.”
Ivy obeyed, wondering why she felt as she did feel—so thoroughly upset and unnerved.
She had been lying down perhaps ten minutes when she heard the now familiar knock of Dr. Berwick. She started up, and what natural colour she had left her cheeks. Angrily she told herself that it was stupid to feel frightened. There was nothing to be frightened about.
The door opened, and the doctor strode into the darkened room. He turned a frowning, preoccupied face on the newly-made widow. Then, when his eyes rested on the tear-stained little face, his expression softened.
“I’m more sorry than I can say that I happened to have been away all yesterday, Mrs. Lexton. I only came back this morning.”
Ivy began to cry, and again he felt touched by her evident distress.
“Sit down, Mrs. Lexton. Do sit down. I’m afraid you’ve had a terrible shock.”
“A dreadful, dreadful shock!” she sobbed, “I had no idea that Jervis was so ill.”
“Last time I was here he was certainly better,” he said quickly. “You thought him better too, didn’t you?”
“I did. I did indeed.”
She was trembling now, and though she was consciously playing a part, her emotion was still genuine.
She sat down on the sofa and the doctor drew up a chair and sat down too, a little to her surprise.
“If you feel up
