[The effect of this bizarre question is startling. _Angela_ turns and
smiles gently like one who has done one's best at a deathbed, and is
almost relieved that the end has come. She walks almost serenely across
the room to the sideboard, and, taking up a piece of cheese and three
bananas, goes off to bed. But the effect on _Lady Gastwyck_ is
different, for directly she hears _Lord Gumthorpe_ make this remark she
realizes that he is a weak man.
There is a pond at the end of the lawn covered with green sedge. She
shivers. She has courage, but not that sort of courage. She rises and
leans against the Adams' fireplace. The Adams' fireplace leans against
her. It falls on to her with a tremendous crash.... _Lord Gumthorpe_
comes forward and gazes at the jumbled _débris_. He is conscious of a
sense of despairing conflict--the conflict between contemplative
amazement and some natural but well-controlled demand for concrete
action. An appalling conviction comes to him that he ought to _do_
something. Under the fallen mess of brick, marble, and wood there are
feeble undulations. A phrase keeps running through his mind--"Expressing
her primitive virility." He tries to think where he has read it, and
what it means, and how it could apply to the present case. The
undulations cease. He decides that the phrase could not apply to it. He
returns to the window-seat. A new horror obsesses him. The moon has
moved round. The chessboard has been blotted out. _In extremis_, _Lord
Gumthorpe_ falls back on his primitive instincts and rings for the
butler. There is an imperceptible pause. _Stud_ glides in and stands in
the middle of the room, tears of reverence and respectability streaming
down his cheeks.
LORD GUMTHORPE. (after an interminable pause). _Your mistress has
dropped her fan into the fireplace!_
[With a little croon of pleasure, Stud falls towards the fireplace.
Suddenly he stops, beholding the-fallen wreckage. For a fraction of a
second the fetters of a generation of servile habits are almost broken.
A fugitive expression of surprise passes over his face. Then,
remembering himself, he stumbles over the _débris_ and, groping among
the cinders, picks up the fan.
STUD (with finesse). _Here is the fan, my Lord. Shall I present it to
her Ladyship?_
LORD GUMTHORPE. (with extraordinary subtlety). _No, you may keep it. Her
Ladyship does not require it._
[_Stud_ goes out with the fan. _Lord Gumthorpe_ stands irresolutely
warming his hands at the fire. _Angela's_ father from Atlantis,
Tennessee, is heard outside in the hall eating cantaloup. The pips
rattle against the door. Unable to withstand this further symbol of
inevitable doom, _Lord Gumthorpe_ throws himself on to the fire. He is
burnt up. The fire is blotted out. Everything is blotted out.