“You’ll simply terrify him,” he said.  “He hasn’t got a chance with all you people grousing and croaking round him.”

And he went off to play in the lawn tennis tournament at Medlicote as a protest against the general pessimism.  His idea seemed to be that if he, Jerrold, could play in a lawn tennis tournament, his father couldn’t be seriously ill.

“It’s perfectly awful of Jerrold,” his mother said.  “I can’t make him out.  He adores his father, yet he behaves as if he hadn’t any feeling.”

She and Anne were sitting in the lounge after luncheon, waiting for Eliot to come from his father’s room.

“Didn’t you tell him, Anne?”

“I did everything I know....  But darling, he isn’t unfeeling.  He does it because he can’t bear to think Uncle Robert won’t get better.  He’s trying to make himself believe he will.  I think he does believe it.  But if he stayed away from the tournament that would mean he didn’t.”

“If only I could.  But I must.  I must believe it if I’m not to go mad.  I don’t know what I shall do if he doesn’t get better.  I can’t live without him.  It’s been so perfect, Anne.  It can’t come to an end like this.  It can’t happen.  It would be too cruel.”

“It would,” Anne said.  But she thought:  “It just will happen.  It’s happening now.”

“Here’s Eliot,” she said.

Eliot came down the stairs.  Adeline went to him.

“Oh Eliot, what do you think of him?”

Eliot put her off.  “I can’t tell you yet.”

“You think he’s very bad?”

“Very.”

“But you don’t think there isn’t any hope?”

“I can’t tell yet.  There may be.  He wants you to go to him.  Don’t talk much to him.  Don’t let him talk.  And don’t, whatever you do, let him move an inch.”

Adeline went upstairs.  Anne and Eliot were alone.  “You can tell,” she said.  “You don’t think there’s any hope.”

“I don’t.  There’s something quite horribly wrong.  His temperature’s a hundred and three.”

“Is that bad?”

“Very.”

“I do wish Jerry hadn’t gone.”

“So do I.”

“It’ll be worse for him, Eliot, than for any of us when he knows.”

“I know.  But he’s always been like that, as long as I can remember.  He simply can’t stand trouble.  It’s the only thing he funks.  And his funking it wouldn’t matter if he’d stand and face it.  But he runs away.  He’s running away now.  Say what you like, it’s a sort of cowardice.”

“It’s his only fault.”

“I know it is.  But it’s a pretty serious one, Anne.  And he’ll have to pay for it.  The world’s chock full of suffering and all sorts of horrors, and you can’t go turning your back to them as Jerrold does without paying for it.  Why, he won’t face anything that’s even a little unpleasant.  He won’t listen if you try to tell him.  He won’t read a book that hasn’t a happy ending.  He won’t go to a play that isn’t a comedy...  It’s an attitude I can’t understand.  I don’t like horrors any more than he does; but when I hear about them I want to go straight where they are and do something to stop them.  That’s what I chose my profession for.”