He was with difficulty captured and taken to her bedroom, where he took his position on the head of the bed and relapsed into stoical silence.
Piers telephoned for the doctor. Meg was sobbing in Augusta's arms. Ernest sat beside the table, his head buried in his arms across the backgammon board. Pheasant had flown upstairs to her bedroom to bedew the ruby ring with tears. Nicholas drew a chair to his mother's side and sat with his shoulders bent, staring blankly into her face. The rector dropped his chin into his beard and murmured a short prayer over the body, stretched out so straight that the feet, in black slippers, projected over the end of the sofa. Again she looked a tall woman.
Mr. Fennel was about to close the eyes. The heavy lids resisted. Renny caught his arm.
"Don't close her eyes! I won't believe she's dead! She can't have died like that!"
He put his hand inside her tea-gown and felt her heart. It was still. He brought a mirror and held it before her nostrils. It bright surface was undimmed. But he would not have her eyes closed.
Soon Dr. Drummond came and pronounced her dead, and himself closed her eyelids. He was an old man, and had brought all the younger Whiteoaks, from Meg down, into the world.
Ernest rose then and came to her, trembling. He stroked her face, and kissed it, sobbing: "Mama . . . Mama." . . . But Nicholas sat motionless as a statue.
Renny could not stay in that house. He would go to Fiddler's Hut and tell Eden and Alayne what had happened. He flung out through the side door into the grassy yard where the old brick oven stood. A waddling procession of ducks cocked their roguish eyes at him; Mrs. Wragge and the kitchenmaid peered after him with curiosity from a basement window. Galloping colts in the paddock came whimpering to the fence as he hurried past. Red and white cows in the pasture, heavy-uddered, turned their tolerant gaze after him. He entered the orchard. The days were already shortening.
