“It was not I who introduced it.”
“I am glad not to feel I shall meet people,” said Graham. “Fancy meeting someone when you had lost his letters, or lost what he left you, through trying to increase it, when it was enough, and you had no right to it! I should find it too much.”
“I should like to meet everyone,” said Walter. “I should not dream of doing such things. I am wonderful with people’s memories. I am glad for Uncle to know it.”
“Yes, we are here to think only of him,” said Simon.
“Graham had not mentioned himself before,” said Fanny.
“It was more than a mention then.”
“Why are we supposed to take so little interest in ourselves?” said Naomi. “I suppose people can’t believe we can take any. And of course we do have to hide it.”
“If you remember my wish, Edwin, I will say no more,” said Julia.
“I will remember, as long as I have a memory.”
“And that will be during your life here,” said Ralph, glancing at his father.
“So I must see Hamish before it ends. I shall carry nothing with me.”
“He should be here at any hour,” said Rhoda. “It may be at this one.”
“We will all go and leave you with him,” said Simon.
“No, you will stay,” said Sir Edwin, leaning forward and laying his hand on his, as if to hold him. “You must hear my words and remember them. You know what they will be. I must leave Hamish in my place, and feel he will fill it. I want to trust you and him. The truth of this moment depends on the truth to come.”
“I understand you, Uncle. You may trust me.”
“I will not say more before he is here. My strength is not much, and is ebbing. I am wise to save it.”
“Are we all to be here, sir?” said Graham.
“All of you who will stay. It secures my purpose.”
“Any behest of yours is safe with us, Edwin,” said Julia. “That is why I feel that mine is with you.”
Fanny was looking at Naomi, knowing her thought.
“You would like to go, my dear? I would come with you.”
“No, I can be here, as Hamish will be. We can both do what we must.”
“There is the carriage!” said Rhoda. “I was listening for it. I sent it to meet the later train, in case Hamish was on it. It joins the train from the coast. Yes, he is there! I hear him.”
Hamish’s voice came across the hall in greeting to Deakin.
“Mr. Hamish!” said the latter at the door.
“Why, everyone is here! Mother, it is good to see you. Father, I am glad to be with you again. I have made all the haste I could—”
“To be in time,” said Sir Edwin. “It was the thing to do. I am further downhill than you knew, nearly at the bottom. But it is my place, and I am easy in it. The hill has been a long one. You will be with me, as I go to the end.”
“I will always be with you, Father. How are you, Aunt Fanny and Aunt Julia? And Naomi and all of you? I am glad to be amongst you again. I am not happy away from my place. I find it is mine.”
“Exile has done its work,” said Sir Edwin. “It has taught you what you had to learn. There is to be some meaning in our years together. It is an old man’s wish, to leave his difference behind. But an old man is what I am.”
“It will be as you say, Uncle,” said Simon, “as we all see it, would all choose it to be. It is not an old or a young man’s wish. It is the wish of us all.”
“So I look at the years ahead, and see them as you will live them. But, Hamish, I want your word on it, your promise that you will take my place, to the best that is in you, to the end of your days. I have been waiting for it. And I should not wait too long.”
“I am to give it, Cousin Simon?” said Hamish, lowering his voice and just glancing at Simon. “I know this is how you wished it to be, that you would not accept my other word. You said you would wait for me to unsay it. You spoke the truth, as you seemed to speak it? I know you are what you seem to be. I am to give my father my promise?”
“You are to give it. I need not say again what I have said.”
“I promise it, Father,” said Hamish. “I will do my best. There is much that is beyond me, but I will try to reach it. And I am not to be without support.”
“So our great-uncle goes in peace,” murmured Ralph. “And Father is to stay where he is. He seems to be prepared for it. But he was also prepared for something else.”
“Hamish has suffered a sea change,” said Graham. “Into something that is strange, if nothing more. It has come of his travels. But I am not sure what it is.”
“Nor am I,” said Naomi. “Though I saw it in a moment, heard it in his first word. But we shall soon know.”
They were not to know at once. That evening Sir Edwin was weaker, and in the hour before daybreak he died. Rhoda and Hamish and Deakin were with him. The meeting and its questions had told on him, and they knew it and were at hand. He died with the ease of his great age, and it seemed more of a change than a grief. He had let them feel his life was past.
It was not until after the burial, that the families met in Hamish’s house.
“So you are our head now, Hamish,” said Julia. “You are in your father’s place — in the — the place that falls to you. You will find it a great change.”
“We are haunted by double meanings,” said Ralph to Naomi. “They hover about us.”
“No one else would speak of it,” said Simon, in a low, sharp tone. “Where is the need to do so?”
“This day brings another back to me,” said Julia. “The day when my husband was buried, Edwin’s younger brother! All those years ago! Life is a strange thing. It will soon be my turn to follow.”
“What ought we to say?” said Graham. “Silence means consent, and seems to mean it. And yet we can hardly disagree.”
“Say nothing,” said Simon.
“Father is in a sinister mood,” said Ralph. “It can hardly be the loss of his uncle at ninety-four.”
“You know what it is,” said Graham. “You are not the one of us in doubt. When Grandma used ambiguous words, you caught their meaning.”
“As she did,” said Ralph. “It is true that the meaning was there.”
“I am always happy in my old home,” said Julia, looking round. “It is the one house I know, where the present has not ousted the past. Everything is as it has been and will be. We can trust Hamish.”
“I would alter nothing of my own purpose, Aunt Julia. But I may be too sunk in the old tradition to judge. We can be too sure that the future can teach us nothing.”
“I think the past does more for us,” said Simon, looking at him. “It gives what has lasted, and so can continue to last.”
“Cousin Simon, the present has given me something. Something I did not think to have again. Something to take the place of what I lost. I hoped to tell my father, while you all heard me. It is in its way a hard thing for me to tell. But the moment was not good for him, and now is past. I move into a future he did not foresee. But we cannot stay where he left us. We must all go forward.”
There was a pause.
“You are going to be married!” said Graham. “I knew there was a difference. I had a — foreboding is not the word. You have the good wishes of us all.”
“My son!” said Rhoda. “What have you from your mother? Her promise of welcome, her joy in yielding her place. Ah, indeed you have it.”
“It is a piece of news indeed,” said Julia. “The surprise is almost too great. It is the last thing we thought of. We had been involved in different things.”
“This adds itself to them. It makes my life into a whole. I can look both back and forward and see so much.”
“It helped you with your promise to your father. Yes, we see that it did. You are glad to succeed him, and have so much to give. That is how you see the matter again. We understand it, and wish you well from our hearts.”