Still, I struggled for composure and forbearance, and offered a blank wall of impenetrability to Mrs. Gabb and Miss Skuce’s storm of questions; for Mrs. Gabb had entered with the tea-tray, and a friendly determination to know “what brought young Mr. Somers at _that_ hour of the night?”
“It is but barely five,” I answered; “and he came to pay me a visit of condolence. He knew Mrs. Hayes very well in India.”
“It’s a most unusual thing,” said Miss Skuce, suspiciously. “I wonder what his _mother_ would say to it?”
At last I got rid of my pair of tormentors. They found that I was indisposed to be communicative. I pleaded (with truth) that I had a dreadful headache. So they departed together—to wonder, suggest, protest, and to discuss _me_, whilst I turned down the lamp, threw myself on the sofa, and cried comfortably for a couple of hours.
Surely, there is no more melancholy task than collecting and putting away the belongings of the dead! Even such little everyday articles as gloves, pens, books, can inflict many agonizing stabs, however tenderly handled, ere they are thrust out of sight. Besides Emma’s own particular possessions, I had to open and investigate the great bullock trunk which contained the remnant of my father’s and mother’s property; so that I was at the present time actually surrounded and invested by the effects of three relatives who had passed away, and by many dumb and inanimate things, which nevertheless spoke with tongues.
The bullock trunk—being large and unwieldy—had been brought up to the drawing-room. I had given orders that no one was to be admitted. I had even locked the door, ere I turned the key in the trunk. It smelt strongly of camphor, and contained mostly my father’s effects—his uniform, his pistols, books, some rare coins, several valuable daggers, several files of paid bills, and boxes of cartridges. Quite at the bottom was a good-sized leathern despatch-box, and a few pale water-color sketches, carefully wrapped in tissue-paper, and also a slender gold-mounted riding-whip and a broken fan. The despatch-box was full of letters—my father’s and mother’s letters. I glanced at one or two. Somehow, I shrank from reading them, from prying into the secrets, the most sacred feelings of my dead parents. There was also an ivory Prayer-book, now very yellow, with the name, “Gwendoline Chalgrove,” inscribed in a bold hand. There were, moreover, a faded photograph of a girl, a little baby’s shirt, in which was stuck a rusty needle, and that was all.