Lady Kingsmead fainted dead away for once in her life, dropping in a
huddled heap near the man she had loved and unloved.
Brigit stared at them for a moment, wondering vaguely which of them was
dead, which only fainting. Then, just as she was kneeling to raise her
mother to a better position, the door opened and two men, one of them
Giacomo, Carron's valet, entered in great haste.
The second man was, he explained, a doctor, whom the valet had gone for
on finding his master's body.
The next few minutes were minutes that Brigit never forgot. The Italian
servant, chattering and weeping, the young doctor helping her to loosen
Lady Kingsmead's tight clothes; his hurried explanations and questions;
the very closeness of the air, with the smell of gunpowder still faintly
perceptible.
Lady Kingsmead, laid upon Carron's bed, came to in a few minutes in
violent hysterics, and the young doctor, when he had given her a
soothing draught, insisted on the two women leaving.
"I must send for the coroner," he explained, "and it will be unpleasant.
Your cab is still at the door, I think? May I have your address?"
He was very civil and sympathetic, this young medico, but he was also
rather too obviously impressed by his own importance and this gruesome
occasion. Brigit gave him the address of her flat, and helping her
mother into a four-wheeler, as more suitable than a hansom, the two
women drove away towards Kensington.
"I hadn't been in his room for years," sobbed Lady Kingsmead, forgetting
her complexion. "Did you see the pastel of me on the wall between the
windows? And I gave him the clock, too, for his thirty-fifth birthday.
Oh, Brigit! He loved me insanely, poor Gerald, perfectly madly, and so
did I." She broke off, to her daughter's relief, and sobbed again.
Brigit's flat was warm and smelt unaired. Two or three letters lay on
the mat inside the door, a huge blue-bottle boomed at a window trying to
get out.
Lady Kingsmead lay down on Maidie Compton's Chesterfield and wept
loudly. "Oh, Gerald, Gerald, how we loved each other," she wailed. "He
would have died for me. He very nearly killed himself----"
Suddenly the foolish woman sat up and pointed an accusing finger at her
daughter. "And it is all your fault," she cried bitterly; "he said so in
that letter--my poor love. Your fault, and you my daughter. You broke
his heart, you tortured him, and you took him from me. I--I _hate_ you."
Brigit stared coldly at her. "Don't make a fool of yourself, mother,"
she said. "You know perfectly well that there is not a word of truth in
what you say."
"There is, there is! It was when you began to grow up that he ceased
loving me. It is all your fault. He wrote it to you. You are to blame;
you murdered him, his blood is on your head! And I scolded him when he
told me about you and Joyselle. I refused to believe him. Oh, Gerald,
Gerald!"
How much she believed of what she said it is impossible to say, but her
lack of self-control and her immense egotism were such that together
they made a formidable force to argue against.
Brigit sneered as she looked down at her. "For Heaven's sake, don't be
so ridiculous," she said impatiently. "And don't--lie."
"I am _not_ lying. He told me about you and Joyselle, and I believe him.
Yes I do, I believe him. You are in love with the man, and that's why
you don't marry his son----"
"Look here, mother," Brigit's temper was rising fast. "Answer one
question quietly, will you? Do you believe what Gerald Carron told you
about me and Joyselle?"
And Lady Kingsmead, whose hysterical excitement was now well beyond
control, screamed out that she did believe it.