He ceased his exploration of the forest floor. He closed his eyes. He felt that he had travelled a road so long and so hard that all he could do now was to stay perfectly still, while admitting that its end had been reached. He was shivering violently and knew that perhaps his Malaria was returning, and again he thought of his brother, so safe in his world of medicine and frock-coated order, and wished that he, more than any other living soul, was by his side and would hold out his hand in mercy.

HEIRLOOM

A few days after Jane’s return to Henrietta Street, as she came home for one of Mrs Morrissey’s sustaining lunches, she found Clorinda in tears.

A feeling that, in a short time, the Irishwoman had become her friend led Jane to go to her and put a consoling arm round her shoulders. Clorinda dried her eyes on her apron and told Jane that it was nothing, ‘just some awkward news from Ireland’ and that she must hurry away now, back to the tea room.

Jane let her go, for it seemed to her that this was what Clorinda wanted, but she decided nevertheless to mention Mrs Morrissey’s upset to her father, as the two of them delved into the mutton stew left for them on the dining room sideboard. And Jane saw that this news claimed Sir William’s complete attention and that after hearing it he fell very silent and had difficulty finishing his meal. As he rose for his afternoon surgery, he said to Jane, ‘I do not like it that Mrs Morrissey is unhappy. I will go down to Camden Street to see her after my last patient has left.’

‘Shall I come with you?’ asked Jane.

‘No, no,’ said Sir William. ‘A kind offer, Jane. But I think it is best if I go alone.’

Jane looked searchingly at her father, but he would not hold her gaze, so she turned away and said nothing more.

Clorinda Morrissey went about her preparations for her afternoon service of tea in her usual efficient way, even remembering to give instructions for some damask table napkins, newly bought from Tilney’s, to be put out and to congratulate Mary on the lightness of her latest batch of scones. But this show of normality concealed, in Mrs Morrissey’s heart, a fearful little worm of terror.

She had received a letter from her brother Michael in Dublin. Michael had related to her how his eldest daughter, Maire, now aged fourteen, had been suffering for some time from ‘a malfunction of the thyroid gland, giving rise to terrible symptoms – a foul goitre on her neck and a strange diminution of her faculties of comprehension’. He told her in the letter that ‘the only hope for Maire’ was an operation to remove all or part of the thyroid, but that this operation would cost far more money than he, who worked as a clerk in the back offices of the Anchor Brewery, could afford.