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Page 18
Henry Glynn looked more like this sister than the others. Both had
the same hard delicacy of form and feature, both were tall and
almost emaciated, both had a sparse growth of gray blond hair far
back from high intellectual foreheads, both had an almost noble
aquilinity of feature. They confronted each other with the
pitiless immovability of two statues in whose marble lineaments
emotions were fixed for all eternity.
Then Henry Glynn smiled and the smile transformed his face. He
looked suddenly years younger, and an almost boyish recklessness
and irresolution appeared in his face. He flung himself into a
chair with a gesture which was bewildering from its incongruity
with his general appearance. He leaned his head back, flung one
leg over the other, and looked laughingly at Mrs. Brigham.
"I declare, Emma, you grow younger every year," he said.
She flushed a little, and her placid mouth widened at the corners.
She was susceptible to praise.
"Our thoughts to-day ought to belong to the one of us who will
NEVER grow older," said Caroline in a hard voice.
Henry looked at her, still smiling. "Of course, we none of us
forget that," said he, in a deep, gentle voice, "but we have to
speak to the living, Caroline, and I have not seen Emma for a long
time, and the living are as dear as the dead."
"Not to me," said Caroline.
She rose, and went abruptly out of the room again. Rebecca also
rose and hurried after her, sobbing loudly.
Henry looked slowly after them.
"Caroline is completely unstrung," said he. Mrs. Brigham rocked.
A confidence in him inspired by his manner was stealing over her.
Out of that confidence she spoke quite easily and naturally.
"His death was very sudden," said she.
Henry's eyelids quivered slightly but his gaze was unswerving.
"Yes," said he; "it was very sudden. He was sick only a few
hours."
"What did you call it?"
"Gastric."
"You did not think of an examination?"
"There was no need. I am perfectly certain as to the cause of his
death."
Suddenly Mrs. Brigham felt a creep as of some live horror over her
very soul. Her flesh prickled with cold, before an inflection of
his voice. She rose, tottering on weak knees.
"Where are you going?" asked Henry in a strange, breathless voice.
Mrs. Brigham said something incoherent about some sewing which she
had to do, some black for the funeral, and was out of the room.
She went up to the front chamber which she occupied. Caroline was
there. She went close to her and took her hands, and the two
sisters looked at each other.
"Don't speak, don't, I won't have it!" said Caroline finally in an
awful whisper.
"I won't," replied Emma.
That afternoon the three sisters were in the study, the large front
room on the ground floor across the hall from the south parlour,
when the dusk deepened.
Mrs. Brigham was hemming some black material. She sat close to the
west window for the waning light. At last she laid her work on her
lap.
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