Mother and Son (14 page)

“It had a meaning. It led to the future. You are right to pity your mother. She trod a treacherous way.”

“Father, I have wondered if things were like this. Your affection asked to be explained. It went beyond an uncle's feeling. I used to fear the thought might strike my mother.”

“It is hard not to be wise after the event,” said Julius, looking into his face. “Are you sure of what you say? Are you not wondering why you did not fear it?”

“I may be confusing the thoughts I have, with those I might have had. It is a moment of confusion. Well, I will go to the children. I will try to feel to them as what they are to me.”

“No, do not do so. That is the thing to forget. Be to them what you have been. You could probably be nothing more. And, as I said, do not ask too much of them. Your mother would not wish it.”

“She does not wish it, Father. Those are the words I would use. And her wish is as ever mine.”

Rosebery went up to the schoolroom and paused within the door. His expression changed, as though he were taken aback by what he saw. The children were seated at the table, Adrian reading and the others playing a game. They glanced at him, but as he was silent, did no more. He stood with his eyes on them, his
feelings showing in his face. At length he came forward, stood with his eyes on the board, suggested a move, and waited for the game to end. It did so soon. They were not at ease under his scrutiny.

“No, do not start another game, Francis,” he said, as if there had been some sign of this. “Put the board and the pieces away. I have something to say to you, that will put such things out of your thoughts.”

“Is it something about Aunt Miranda?” said Adrian, looking up.

“What makes you say that? Have you noticed any change in her of late?”

“No, but Bates said the doctor told her she could not live very long.”

There was a pause.

“And knowing that, you settled to games and books?” said Rosebery, as if he could not believe his words.

“What were we to do?” said Francis. “Doing nothing would help neither her nor us.”

“Absorption in amusements suggests you were not in need of help.”

“Those might be the right words, if we cared more for her, and she for us. As it is, we are not in your place. We cannot give up our lives to anxiety. It could not be strong enough in us. And she may be ill for a long time.”

“She will not be,” said Rosebery.

“Is she dead?” said Adrian.

“She is what you mean by the word. Never again will you hear her voice, catch the sound of her footfall on the stairs. The first chapter of your life is ended.”

Alice and Adrian met each other's eyes, a smile threatening to appear on their lips.

“Will it make much difference?” said Adrian, as if the words fell from him.

“Perhaps it will make no difference, Adrian,” said Rosebery.

“It will make a difference indeed,” said Francis, rising to his feet. “We have had great generosity from her, and shall remember her with gratitude. If we did not earn her affection, the reason may have been in ourselves.”

“It is spoken like a man, Francis. I am glad you have such feeling, and the will and courage to express it; and I will take you to speak for all. And if you did not win her heart, I may myself have been to blame. I may have taken too large a share of it. And I cannot find it in me to regret it. The memory will be my life.”

“Is Uncle upset?” said Alice.

“If that is the word you would use, with your present command of words,” said Rosebery, just smiling. “He is facing his own grief.”

“Shall we all go on in the same way?” said Adrian.

“We all shall not. I shall go on in a different way, a different man. You may do as you suggest; but even you may not find everything so much the same.”

“He meant on the surface,” said Alice.

“Yes, on the surface you will go on in the same way,” said Rosebery, in a lifeless tone, turning to the door. “How far it is the same underneath only you will know.”

“Will you give Uncle our love?” said Alice.

“I will, and I am glad to take the message. I hoped to have one.”

“It is a good thing words were put into your mouth,” said Francis to his sister, as the door closed.

“And a better that they were put into yours. What would have happened to us without them? Enough happened as it was.”

“Did you mean what you said?” said Adrian to his brother.

“I meant it in a sense. We cannot all follow your line of simple self-exposure.”

“Words do not mean everything.”

“So the heart knoweth its own bitterness.”

“Adrian's heart has no bitterness to know,” said Alice.

There was some mirth, and in the midst of it Rosebery returned, laid a photograph on the table, cast his eyes over the three faces and left the room.

“What if words had been put into his mouth?” said Francis.

“He seemed to do better without them,” said his sister. “Perhaps they were denied him on purpose. I think the providers of them are on his side.”

“Are we supposed to be joking?” said Adrian.

“No, we are supposed to be sorrowing. We are joking.”

“Do you think Rosebud is listening at the door?”

“No,” said Francis; “that is a thing he would be ashamed of.”

“That would in an ordinary way be true, Francis,” said Rosebery, opening the door fully. “But he happened to be pausing in a natural preoccupation, and to catch what was said. And he has something to ask of you all. Will you grant it to him?”

“We do not know what it is,” said Alice.

“I think I can assure you it is nothing on a large or impossible scale. You are not strangers to me.”

“We will grant it, if we can,” said Francis.

“Then I will ask you to give up calling me behind my back what you would not call me to my face,” said Rosebery, his tone not making the best of this custom. “To do what my mother would wish, now that she can no longer enforce it.”

“We will try to remember,” said Alice.

“And will you crown the assurance by completing your answer now?”

“We will try to remember, Cousin Rosebery,” said Alice, in a light, conscious tone, glancing at the window.

“And you, Adrian?”

“I will try to remember, Cousin Rosebery.”

“Francis, you are perhaps beyond the age for receiving such suggestion. But may I take silence for consent?”

“Yes, indeed you may.”

“Yes, indeed you may——” said Rosebery, bending his head and using a musical note.

“Yes, indeed you may, Cousin Rosebery,” said Francis, glancing at the others and suppressing a smile.

“Then I will leave you in the assurance that this little service will be rendered to my mother and me.”

There was a pause after he had gone.

“It is much to ask,” said Francis. “And it is entirely for himself. He has waited until no one else benefits by it.”

“Are we going to keep the promise?” said Adrian.

“We will take a middle course and call him ‘Rosebery'. That will be easier than the other, indeed the easiest of all.”

“It was hard to say ‘Rosebud',” said Alice. “It would comfort him to know. It was like missing out the ‘Aunt' in ‘Aunt Miranda'.”

“Shall we let Pettigrew know we have changed?” said Adrian. “Or would it look as if we made resolves when Aunt Miranda died?”

“That is a thing that must not be,” said Francis.

“And it would give him a hold on us,” said Alice.

“Do we realise that she is dead?” said Adrian.

“I don't think we can. Indeed I think we must hope not.”

Bates entered the room, with her lips set and a change in her eyes.

“Well, this is a sad day for us all.”

Her hearers looked at her with their lips less under control.

“There are the feelings in our hearts,” she said, as though conscious they did not appear elsewhere.

“Did Aunt Miranda know she was going to die?” said Adrian.

“She knew not on what day or at what hour.”

“She ought to have had a foreknowledge,” said Francis.

“Well, there had been signs, sir.”

“Did she mind dying?” said Adrian, in an incidental tone.

Alice gave him a quick look and glanced at Francis.

“She passed in a moment, Master Adrian. And there is no need to wish it otherwise.”

“You mean she was prepared?” said Alice.

“That is the implication, miss, and I do not grudge it.”

“Was she surprised that she had to die like other people?” said Adrian. “Perhaps she was like Canute, and felt that in real things she was the same as they were.”

“I think it is unlikely,” said Francis. “She always assumed a difference.”

“And dampness is hardly to be compared with death,” said Alice.

“It is no moment for lightness,” said Bates.

“Things are to go on in the same way,” said Adrian.

“Well, that is the figure of speech, sir.”

“I think the house feels different.”

“From attic to cellar,” said Bates, in a deep tone.

“I think Cousin Rosebery minds the most. We are to call him that, because Aunt Miranda liked it.”

“There is a life that will be a blank,” said Bates.

“Surely not, if we call him ‘Cousin Rosebery',” said Alice.

Bates checked a smile.

“I have said it is not the moment, miss.”

“I think it seems to be,” said Francis. “Shock may have many kinds of outlet.”

“Pleasantry is not the one,” said Bates.

“Has Aunt Miranda left you anything?” said Adrian.

“Well, I have been here thirty-seven years, sir,” said
Bates, with sudden formality. “And I have brooked change. But I have cast no forward glance.”

“Has the thought never gone through your mind?” said Alice.

“Well, thoughts may be vagrant, miss.”

“Would you rather have Aunt Miranda or what she has left you?” said Adrian.

“That is not a query to put.”

“Did Aunt Miranda like you very much?”

“I had her respect, Master Adrian.”

“As we had not,” said Alice. “I wonder what it felt like to have it.”

“I am not familiar with any other situation, miss.”

A message from Julius summoned the children to a late meal downstairs.

“I expect we shall have more respect now,” said Adrian.

“That is not the line of thought,” said Bates.

“Shall we have to be a comfort to Uncle? It seems like a book.”

“There is no need for it to be too much like one. Be natural with the master. Don't treat it as an occasion.”

“It has some claim to be seen as one,” said Francis.

“We shall always be at ease now,” said Adrian, as Bates left them.

“I did not dare to say it,” said Francis.

“Of course truth comes out of the mouth of babes,” said Alice. “They are too simple to suppress it.”

“Shall we have to pretend to-night?” said Adrian.

“You can observe Alice and me, and follow our example,” said his brother.

There was no need for this precaution. Julius came to the table in a normal manner, and Rosebery followed in his ordinary evening clothes.

“I see your eyes are resting on me, Father. But for me there is no reason to alter my ways. My mother is present, as always, to me. To me her place is not empty. For aught I know, her eyes are on us.”

“She would understand my not thinking of my clothes to-night.”

“Father, I feel she understands us both.”

“I am on Rosebery's level,” murmured Alice. “It is Bates's fault.”

“I think anything to be said to-night may be said openly,” said Rosebery. “It is not a day for words that have to be veiled.”

“But a day when it may be best to veil them,” said Julius.

“Then surely they would be better unsaid.”

“Did Pettigrew come to-night?” said Julius.

“No, I suppose he had heard,” said Francis, “and thought it proper to stay away.”

“And I think it was so, Francis,” said Rosebery, “and that it does honour to his feelings. It is surely not natural to treat the day as a usual one.”

“No one is criticising him,” said Julius.

“I thought there was an element of criticism in Francis's words. There is something about the phrase, ‘thought it proper', that hints at it.”

“Will he come tomorrow?” said Adrian.

“There is no reason why he should not,” said Julius.

“Father, I should have thought there was every
reason until after Thursday,” said Rosebery, mentioning the day of the funeral.

“Then we will send him a message. It is better for the pupils to be occupied.”

“Shall we prepare for him?” said Adrian.

“No, not to-night. Your thoughts will be on other things.”

“And will not that hold good until after Thursday, Father?”

“It may for some time. But only to-day need be treated as an unusual one.”

“No doubt you feel that would be my mother's wish.”

“I am considering the matter in itself. No one can deal with the questions arising from her death.”

“It seems that people ought to be able to,” said Adrian.

“So it does,” said Julius. “That is why we are finding them difficult.”

The door was softly opened, and Hester entered the room, and came in silence to her seat.

“You have missed the soup, Miss Wolsey,” said Julius.

“No, I meant to come in at this stage. You shall not have a stranger with you longer than you must.”

“Miss Wolsey, surely you are no longer that,” said Rosebery; “after the pleasure you gave my mother, and the added intimacy that came with it.”

“I felt it was coming. And my own disappointment is the greater. But it has no place by the other feeling.”