“Why, what d’you mean?” He had a vague impression there might be more in this than immediately appeared. He began to feel upset in his stomach.
“No more than I’m asking, slow coach,” she replied. “I want you to open up.”
“How’s that?”
“You’ll find it ever so much better after,” she gently assured him. “There’s something on your mind from way back, I know, and it’s none of that silly old Rose business, I’m certain. So what was it like out there?”
“Oh, just ordinary, I suppose,” he said with reluctance.
“I’ll wager it was.”
“Can’t talk about that, Nance,” he brought out at last, obviously distressed.
“No more you need if you don’t want,” she said, and his eyes went back to the kittens. “Why, here’s mother,” she cried.
He did not get up as Mrs Grant came into the room. He watched the cat, which was dragging one of her kittens back by the scruff of its neck. She was crouching down as though anguished, while the kitten let out high, thin shrieks.
“Why Charley,” Mrs Grant said to him, and he looked to find the old lady dressed in black, but at her best. She seemed just the same.
“I did want to thank you,” she went on, sitting between them on the sofa. “It was really wonderful, your staying with us all through that terrible night. It made the whole difference, dear, didn’t it,” she appealed to Nancy, “having a man in the house,” she explained. Charley began to calm down again. What appeared to him to be the usualness of this conversation, settled his stomach. “Though Father didn’t suffer. I was there. I know,” she said. “No, he never knew what it was that struck him down at the last, but at the same time he had the comfort of his loved ones round him at the end.”
She paused, and Nancy took one of her hands in her own.
“And what I should have done without you, my dear, I can’t even begin to picture,” Mrs Grant said to the girl. “Why, she was no more to me than my own daughter could have been,” she told Charles who, heart at rest, was, in simplicity, smiling at the kittens. “Nothing could ever be too much for her,” Mrs Grant continued, “day or night, never too much trouble, oh dear, I’ve been very lucky in my loved ones,” the old lady came to an end, the tears rimming her eyes.
Nance murmured something. But Mrs Grant was started.
“She’ll make a splendid wife to a man one of these days,” she said. “But Father was wonderful,” she came back to it, in exactly the same tone of voice. “Never the least word of complaint, although he lay in a kind of terrible living grave, the poor darling. Not once a look in his eyes, even. Oh I’ve been fortunate in my life,” Mrs Grant announced, with utter sincerity. “I lost my only child it’s true, but now I’ve found another. And then I was blessed with a good husband. He was a wonderful man to me. Forty-seven years we lived together, and he never gave me a moment’s unease.”
Charley glanced at her. He saw she was at peace, looking straight in front, the tears now running down her red cheeks. Then his eyes fell back to the cat again.
“It was all you did for him,” Nance told the older woman.
“I was what Gerald made me,” Mrs Grant proudly answered. “When I married I didn’t know the littlest thing, but he took me along at his side. You can smile, dear,” she said to Nancy, who was doing no such thing, “then one of these days you’ll learn for yourself, you’ll remember who it was told you. Oh yes, when I was young, I thought I understood all there was to know, but I soon found my mistake.” She spoke quietly. Charley felt even more at peace. “And so thoughtful,” she went on. “D’you know what I came upon, the morning after he died? Why a policy I’d no notion he’d been keeping up, so that I shan’t want for my little comforts till I go to join him. Oh, he was a good man.”
They sat tranquilly by.
“And it’s something you don’t discover till you’ve had your experience, dear,” she continued to Nancy. “Life is like that. Oh, I don’t mean not to have your good times when you’re a girl, but, to a woman, the truth and the meaning come after she’s married. So you’ll find a right husband, won’t you, if only to please your old mother here.”
“She will,” Charley echoed.
“What d’you mean, I will?” Miss Whitmore took him up, boisterously. “What do you know about it?”
“Me?” he asked, brought back to earth.
“Oh, you young people,” Mrs Grant smiled. “Now I think I’ll go sit with Father again. It’s my last afternoon with him.” She left quite naturally.
“She’s been wonderful,” Nancy said.
“I expect you’re a help yourself.”
“Don’t be stupid, silly. I only did what anyone would, who was here,” she protested.
“Don’t those kittens play the old cat up,” he remarked.
“Yes, they are cute, aren’t they?” she said.
“Well, it’s a grand thing Mrs Grant has come through the way she has,” he announced. Miss Whitmore noticed he seemed much freer. “Thanks to you,” he added. But she saw he was still watching the kittens.
“You’re coming to the funeral tomorrow, aren’t you?” she asked.
He had not intended to do this. He sat listening now, not knowing what to say.
“You could pass the night,” she explained. “I’d make your bed up on the sofa, once more.” He hadn’t considered this.
He stayed quite still.
“I’d not let it be like the last time,” she said, referring to the death of Mr Grant, but of course he was not to know this, not at once.
He began, again, to feel the old upset in his stomach. Only, because he really loved her now, he was much shyer.
“I couldn’t,” he said, pushing happiness off.
“Why, whatever’s to stop you? Not that old Mrs Frazier, surely?”
“You don’t understand,” he said, careful not to look.
“Mother’ll be terribly put out if you don’t,” Nancy explained. “You could be back at your office after the lunch hour.”
He seized onto this.
“It’s my work,” he said.
“You mean, you never asked leave? You are forgetful, Charley, aren’t you? And when I took the trouble to let you know, soon as ever we fixed it. Well, if you didn’t get permission, it’s too late now, naturally.”
While she was there he was all right, and while he was busy at the office he forgot. But he was sleeping badly once more, what with his doubts and fears, this time about Nance. He knew she wouldn’t come to him in this room, though sometimes she said things to make it so that he couldn’t be certain. But he felt that he might have a good night’s rest, at last, if he could remain on here this evening after all. He wondered how to put it.
“I might stay,” he said.
“And not go to the funeral?” He looked at her. There was a half smile of complicity on her face. “Oh no, you can’t do that,” she went on. “It wouldn’t be right. Mother wouldn’t understand.”
He saw he was not going to have his way. He began to feel miserable.
“Come up with you,” she said. “It’s not all that, sleeping on the old sofa, surely?” She kept herself from wondering what he wished to express. All she wanted was that he should speak out, whatever it might be.
“You’ve always something, bothering you, that you can’t seem to rid yourself of,” she went on, sadly, when he did not say it. “You mightn’t be sitting here with me. I might be an old ghost,” she said.
“Now Nance.” Greatly daring he turned to her, and made as if to put an arm round her waist.
“Steady,” she warned him. “We shan’t want much of that, shall we, or not until after the funeral, at all events?” Then she changed the conversation. “What was it passed between Mr Mead and his wife on the telephone, the time you rang me up about?”