And then, one day eighteen months ago, I was quietly writing in
my room at Branshaw when Leonora came to me with a letter. It
was a very pathetic letter from Colonel Rufford about Nancy.
Colonel Rufford had left the army and had taken up an
appointment at a tea-planting estate in Ceylon. His letter was
pathetic because it was so brief, so inarticulate, and so
business-like. He had gone down to the boat to meet his daughter,
and had found his daughter quite mad. It appears that at Aden
Nancy had seen in a local paper the news of Edward's suicide. In
the Red Sea she had gone mad. She had remarked to Mrs Colonel
Luton, who was chaperoning her, that she believed in an
Omnipotent Deity. She hadn't made any fuss; her eyes were quite
dry and glassy. Even when she was mad Nancy could behave
herself.
Colonel Rufford said the doctor did not anticipate that there was
any chance of his child's recovery. It was, nevertheless, possible
that if she could see someone from Branshaw it might soothe her
and it might have a good effect. And he just simply wrote to
Leonora: "Please come and see if you can do it."
I seem to have lost all sense of the pathetic; but still, that simple,
enormous request of the old colonel strikes me as pathetic.
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