Henry and Cato Read Online Free PDF Page A

was still sitting beside the library fire in a small armchair pulled up so close that her little velvet slippers were right among the ashes. The fire had died down, there were no flames now, only a parade of red sparks upon a blackened log. The log subsided with a sigh and the sparks vanished.
    Gertrude had thought: if he had really cared about me he would have seen to it that I went to bed instead of leaving me here. He would have waited like a dog. He thinks only of himself. But this was just a mechanical thought, the kind of thought that came every day. She had forgotten about Lucius, forgotten about their conversation, which although it reflected some of her deep concerns had been merely a way of prolonging his presence, of using it up. She would not appeal to him, and she so feared to be alone.
    The house had changed. It had lived with Burke’s life and with Sandy’s life, and before Burke and before Sandy it had cast its ray upon Gerda’s childhood. Living nearby, she had loved the house before she had loved her husband; and when she came to it from her humbler home as a bride of nineteen it had seemed a symbol of eternity. The house had been her education and her profession, and the men, Burke’s widowed father, Burke, Sandy, had made it her shrine. But now, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, she and the house were strangers. No one really cared about Sandy’s death, even the house did not care. It had its own purposes and its own future. Gerda had looked at her letters of condolence and seen a heap of bones. She had been an only child, so had Burke. Burke’s relations in the north were only concerned about their chances of a legacy. Her own relations in London, whom she never saw, had envied her grand marriage and were pleased at her misfortune. Her neighbours, Mrs Fontenay at the Grange, the curate Mr Westgate, the architect Giles Gosling, even the Forbeses, were not sincere. The only person who was really sad was the old rector, now retired, and he was thinking of his own death and not of Sandy’s. Gerda had set herself apart and was now an exile in her own home. Her wandering feet roused echoes which she had never heard before.
    But it was not even of this that she was thinking as she went up the dim staircase and darkened the long landing behind her. Nor would she think at all of changeling Henry. The thought of Henry was like a door which instantly snapped open showing her beyond the hospital bed with Sandy lying there as she had last seen him, as she had insisted upon seeing him. And she wondered now how she could go on existing through the successive moments of her life.
    At about the hour when Cato Forbes was walking to and fro on Hungerford Bridge and Henry Marshalson was awakening from his first sleep on the jumbo jet high above the Atlantic and Gerda Marshalson and Lucius Lamb were in conference in the library of Laxlinden Hall, John Forbes was sitting beside the big stove in his slate-flagged kitchen, re-reading a letter which he had received from his daughter Colette. The letter ran as follows.
    Dearest Dad,
    I think I must give up the college, I can save the fees for the term if I leave now, I just asked the office. I kept trying to tell you but you wouldn’t listen and when we argue you always muddle me and I don’t say what I think, please please forgive me. It is quite clear to me now, I have thought it over sincerely and I just don’t feel that my studies are relevant to anything worth while. I talked to Mr Tindall and he agreed, I think he heaved a sigh of relief! I feel I have been deceiving myself and deceiving you and passing myself off as something I am not. Please understand me, Dad, I’ve always wanted so much to please you, perhaps too much! I forced myself against my nature, and that can’t be right, can it. I feel very unhappy about it all. I feel I am a failure, but it is better to stop now and not waste your money any more. I think I never told