The Fall of Doctor Onslow
Page 23
When his guests had left him, Onslow dismayed his servants by insisting on taking a short walk round the Deanery Yard, though it was a cold night and very late. When he came back, he was chilled but flushed, and he took a little brandy before before going to bed. He slept well, but in the morning he found that he had caught a cold.
*
Onslow’s cold turned quickly to pneumonia, and he knew that at last, he was dying. When one of the canons of the cathedral came to give him communion for the last time, he tried to say that he was not a Christian and could not take the sacrament, but somehow, the words would not come. He was, he supposed, so accustomed to living a lie. He meekly took the bread and wine, and as he lay still afterwards, thoughts of all those who had once been important to him flickered in his mind, and then went out: thoughts of Dr Arnold, and Arthur Bright, and Anstey-Ward and Primrose and Louisa. His last coherent words referred merely to the boys at Charton.
‘Tell them,’ he said, ‘that I wasn’t half kind enough.’
Copyright
This ebook edition first published in 2014
by Faber and Faber Ltd
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All rights reserved
© Frances Vernon, 1994
Preface © Michael Marten and Sheila Vernon, 2014
The right of Frances Vernon to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
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ISBN 978–0–571–32257–2