“Oh, the Master isn't ever going to do that, not really, is he?” exclaimed Mary, aghast.
“So I believe,” said Mrs Beecher, rising ponderously and moving towards the stove. “Not that I'm one for nosing into other people's business, but I had it from Miss Harriet as long ago as last Thursday. It's time the Early Teas went up. Hand me over the caddy, Rose, there's a good girl.”
Rose complied with this request, and stood waiting while Mrs Beecher filled three little teapots, and one glass tumbler in a silver holder. “You might carry Miss Stella's tray up for me, dear,” said Rose to Mary, receiving the tumbler of hot water from Mrs Beecher, and placing it upon a small tray.
Mary finished her own tea in two gulps, and got up. She had her own work to do, and plenty of it, but if you were only an under-housemaid it paid you to keep in with the upper servants. She picked up Miss Stella's tray, and followed Rose up the back-stairs, Beecher bringing up the rear with the Master's and Mr Guy's trays poised on his capable hands.
Miss Stella was not awake, and, as usual, she had left her clothes scattered about the floor. Mary drew back the curtains, tidied the clothes, and slipped out of the room again. Miss Stella wouldn't thank you for waking her.
Mr Guy's tray was reposing on the table in the hall, and Rose was still in Mrs Matthews' room. Mary could hear Mrs Matthews' slightly plaintive voice raised behind the shut door. She was just about to go and fill the hot-water cans, when the door of the Master's room opened, and Beecher came out rather quickly.
Mary stared at him. There was a queer, scared look on his face. “Anything wrong, Mr Beecher?” she asked.
He passed his tongue between his lips, and answered in a shaken voice: “Yes. It's the Master. He's dead.”
Her lips parted, but she could find nothing to say. A kaleidoscope of impressions flashed through her brain. It was shocking, awful, and yet thrilling. There might be an Inquest. She didn't want to have anything to do with it; she wouldn't be out of it for worlds.
Rose came out of Mrs Matthews' room. “Well!” she said. “Anyone would think there was no work to be done in this house! Where are my cans?”
Mary found her voice. “Oh, Rose!” she faltered. “The Master's dead!”
“Somebody's got to tell Them,” said Beecher, glancing at the four shut doors. “I don't know who.”
Rose solved this problem for him. She broke into noisy tears, not because she had been fond of the Master, or disliked the thought of a death in the house, but because she was startled. The sound of her hysterical sobs brought the ready tears to Mary's eyes too. It also brought Miss Matthews out into the hall, with her grey hair in curlers, and an aged flannel dressing-gown huddled round her. She had forgotten her glasses, and she peered shortsightedly at the group before her.
“What is the matter? Rose—is that you, Rose? Disgraceful! If you've broken any of the china it will come out of your wages, and it's no use crying about it. The breakages in this house—”
“Oh, madam!” gulped Mary. “Oh, madam, it's the Master!”
The door next to Miss Matthews' opened. Stella stood yawning on the threshold in peach silk pyjamas, and with her short hair ruffled up like a halo about her face. “What on earth's all the row about?” she inquired fretfully.
“Stella! Your dressing-gown!” exclaimed her aunt.
“I'm all right. Oh, do shut up, Rose! What is it?”
Both maids were now sobbing gustily. Beecher said: “It's the Master, miss. He's dead.”
Miss Matthews gave a shriek, but Stella, staring at Beecher for a moment, said: “Rot! I don't believe it.”
“It's true, miss. He's — he's cold.”
Somehow that seemed funny. Stella gave an uncertain giggle.
Her aunt said: “How you can stand there and laugh —! I'm sure I don't understand you modern girls, and what is more I don't want to. Not that I believe a word of it. I shall go and see for myself. Where are my glasses? Mary! my glasses!”
“I'll go,” said Stella, walking across the hall.
“Stella, not in your pyjamas!” screamed Miss Matthews.
Stella began to laugh again, trying to stifle the unbecoming sound by biting her lips.
Her uncle's room was in the front of the house, separated from his sister-in-law's by a bathroom. Beecher had drawn back the curtains, and set the early morning tea-tray down on a table beside the bed. It was evident, even to Stella, looking on death for the first time, that Gregory Matthews would never drink tea again.
He was lying on his back in an uncomfortably rigid attitude, his arms tossed outside the bedclothes, the fingers gripping the sheet as though in a last convulsion. His eyes were open, the pupils contracted. Stella stood looking down at him, her face slowly whitening. She heard her aunt's querulous voice, her footstep in the hall, and moved towards the door. “I say, Aunt Harriet!” she said jerkily. “Don't come! It's beastly!”
Miss Matthews, however, fastening her pincenez on her nose with trembling hands, pushed past her niece into the room, and walked up to the bed. “Oh, he's dead!” she said superfluously, and recoiled. “It's his blood pressure. I knew it would happen! He ought never to have eaten that duck, and it's no use anyone blaming me, because I ordered cutlets for him, and if he wouldn't eat them nobody can say it was my fault. Oh dear, oh dear, he does look dreadful! I wish he hadn't gone like that. We may have had our differences, but blood's thicker than water, say what you will! And you'd never think it, but he was a dear little boy! Oh, whatever are we going to do?”
“I don't know,” said Stella, taking her arm, and pulling her towards the door. “Let's get out of this room, anyway. Oh aunt, don't, for God's sake!”
Miss Matthews allowed herself to be led away, but continued to weep. Stella, unable to feel that Gregory Matthews' nature when a little boy could compensate her aunt for all the subsequent years of strife, was impatient of this facile grief, and thankfully gave her into Mary's charge.
Rose, still gulping, quavered a message from Mrs Matthews: Miss Stella was to go to her mother at once.
Mrs Matthews was reclining against her pillows in a most becoming bed jacket, and had evidently had the presence of mind to wipe the expensive night-cream from her face, and apply a dusting of powder. She turned her head as Stella came into the room, and held out a wavering hand. “Oh, my dear child!” she said in an extinguished voice. “Poor Gregory! It has given me a terrible shock. I had a feeling when Rose brought my hot water.”
“Aunt Harriet says it must have been the duck he ate for dinner,” said Stella, still on the verge of a giggle.
Mrs Matthews gave a faint, pained sigh. “No one knows dear Harriet's good points better than I do,” she remarked, “but one can't help being a little sad that her first thoughts in face of a thing like this should be still of mundane things. Do you know, darling, that when Rose told me what had happened I could only think of those beautiful words: “God's ways are—" ”
“Yes, I know,” interrupted Stella hastily. “But the point is what ought we to do? Aunt Harriet's having a sort of hysterical fit. Shall I call Guy?”
“Poor Guy!” said his mother. “One would give one's all to keep tragedy away from the young. Somehow—”
“Well, if it comes to that I'm three years younger than Guy,” Stella pointed out. “Not that I think he'll be much use, but—”
Mrs Matthews laid a hand on hers and pressed it. “Dearest, not that flippant tone, please! Try to remember that the Shadow of Death is over this house. And Guy is far, far more highly-strung than you are, dear.”
“Oh mother, do stop!” implored Stella. “Honestly, I don't want to have hysterics, but I shall in a minute. What ought we to do first?”
Mrs Matthews removed her hand. “My practical little daughter! Where should we poor Marys of this world be, I wonder, without our Marthas? And yet one does somehow yearn for just a little time to be quiet, to face our loss, before we plunge into the sordid side of what ought not to be sordid at all, but very, very beautiful.”