I told Frank that Clare was in a terrible state, and entrusted her to his care.  Frank is a good unselfish brother, and he went to look after her.

Johnny, silent and troubled, and looking as if death was out of his line, though, Heaven knows, he had seen enough of it during the last five years, was fidgeting awkwardly about the room.  His awkwardness was, no doubt, partly due to the fact that he had never much cared for Oliver.  This does make things awkward, in the presence of the Great Silencer.

Percy had to leave us now, in order to go to the Haste and see about things there.  He said he would be back in the afternoon.  He would, of course, take over the business of making the last sad arrangements, which Jane called, rather crudely, ‘seeing about the funeral’; the twins would always call spades ‘spades.’

Presently I made the suggestion which I had for some time had in my mind.

‘May I, dear?’ I asked very softly, half rising.

Jane rose, too.

‘See Oliver, you mean?  Oh, yes.  He’s in his room.’

I motioned her back.  ‘Not you, darling.  Johnny will take me.’

Johnny didn’t want to much, I think; it is the sort of strain on the emotions that he dislikes, but he came with me.

8

What had been Oliver lay on the bed, stretched straight out, the beautiful face as white and delicate as if modelled in wax.  One saw no marks of injury; except for that waxy pallor he might have been sleeping.

In the presence of the Great White Silence I bowed my head and wept.  He was so beautiful, and had been so alive.  I said so to Johnny.

‘He was so alive,’ I said, ‘so short a time ago.’

‘Yes,’ Johnny muttered, staring down at the bed, his hands in his pockets.  ’Yesterday, of course.  Rotten bad luck, poor old chap.  Rotten way to get pipped.’

For a minute longer I kept my vigil beside that inanimate form.

‘Peace, peace, he is not dead,’ I repeated to myself.  ’He sleeps whom men call dead....  The soul of Adonais, like a star, beckons from the abode where the eternal are.’

Death is wonderful to me; not a horrible thing, but holy and high.  Here was the lovely mortal shell, for which ‘arrangements’ had to be made; but the spirit which had informed it was—­where?  In what place, under what conditions, would Oliver Hobart now fulfil himself, now carry on the work so faithfully begun on earth?  What word would he be able to send us from that Place of Being?  Time would (I hoped) show.

As we stood there in the shadow of the Great Mystery, I heard Frank talking to Clare, whose room was next door.

’It is wrong to give way....  One must not grieve for the dead as if one would recall them.  We know—­you and I know, don’t we, Clare—­that they are happier where they are.  And we know too, that it is God’s will, and that He decides everything for the best.  We must not rebel against it....  If you really want to catch the 12.4 to Potter’s Bar, we ought to start now.’