I can’t bear it, Julia said to herself, it’s too wonderful, it’s too much. If we go now everything will come right, but if only we go now this instant minute, it must be at once, oh, please.
Angela said ‘goody’ and Julia thought of a difficulty. ‘But how on earth?’ she cried and he said gently, ‘by the lift.’ Amabel sat on as though she had not heard as people do who know it will all be the same wherever they may be and who have maids to look after them.
‘Oh, you don’t understand,’ said Julia off her balance and wildly excited, ‘you can’t, no one can go, they’ve broken in below you see, d’you mean they really want us to be off?’
‘I say,’ Angela said, ‘my luggage is in the cloakroom.’
Max said he would see to that and Julia began. She rambled, not pronouncing what she was saying very well and looking sideways at the carpet while she now pressed his arm hard with hers. She wanted to know what she was to do about Thomson and when their train would go, did she have time to get ready, and again how would they get out as Max had not heard about the crowds that had broken in and hadn’t they better ring her uncle up to find out if it was safe? Max took no notice of her except he said once he would look after it and gradually Julia began to run down and as she did so happiness came back to her, budding out of her fingers and her cheeks and hair like new landscapes open with a change of season after frost. She felt she was living again and with that feeling she wondered if she had not been rather ridiculous perhaps. She said Evelyn and Claire ought to be told and with that she suddenly left them and ran out, and looking back in through the door she said, ‘but we haven’t to go just at once, have we?’ and then was gone again.
Radiantly happy she rushed into that room Miss Fellowes lay in and thinking that she would be unconscious, burst out saying, ‘children we are to go, they’ve telephoned to say it’s all over, isn’t it wonderful and we’re to get ready, darlings, just think.’
But Miss Fellowes, who was sitting up in bed, took this to mean that they were at last ready to remove her.
‘My dear,’ she said, ‘I’m very glad to hear it, I feel I’ve been here long enough, though Claire will insist on saying I ought to stay the night.’
Julia had not seen Miss Fellowes when she came in so that it was a shock to hear her voice and more than a shock to see her propped up in bed exhausted. She looked as if she had been travelling.
Julia had never thought of her as being old. She had been brought up with Claire and so had always known Miss Fellowes who had in consequence seemed ageless to her in that her appearance had not altered much in all those years. And now she saw her all at once as very old and for the last time that day she heard the authentic threatening knock of doom she listened for so much when things were not going right. But it was impossible for anything to upset her now they were really going.
‘Why, Auntie Fellowes,’ she said, ‘I never saw you and there you are sitting up in bed. Why you see,’ she rushed on, ‘it’s for us, our train is going to run after all, isn’t it wonderful?’
‘Darling,’ said Claire, ‘I was telling Auntie May she really must be good and stay here for a while, at least until she gets her strength.’
‘But I feel quite well now, Claire, quite well.’
‘You must be careful, darling, really.’
‘Now, darling Aunt Fellowes,’ Julia said, ‘you mustn’t get in a fuss.’
She was about to say she was in no fuss and that all she asked, and it was reasonable enough, was to be allowed to get better in the comforts of her home, when she realized it would be better to let them think they were having their own way like Daisy had when they put her in that asylum. She had kept on telling them how glad she was to be there until they had pronounced her sane and let her go. She could remember now Daisy saying they would have put her in the strait-jacket if she had resisted, so she determined to say nothing but unfortunately she was so weak she began to cry. She began to shake also. Claire kissed her and said she was to rest and not to worry and took those other two girls out with her again.
They stood outside in the corridor and Julia, who was unaffected, she was so excited at their going away, said she was sorry, she had no idea she would be able to hear anything, she had thought she would still be unconscious.
‘Well, it was rather a pity, darling,’ Claire said, ‘and just when I was telling her we could not move her out or get her doctor in.’
‘She’s ill,’ Julia said, ‘and she’ll just have to get used to the idea. When one’s ill one’s ill and there’s an end of it, one has to stay there till one gets better.’
‘I was thinking,’ Claire said, ‘you know I don’t think I can come, not now anyway, I can’t leave her like that. I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to her.’
‘Darling, you can’t speak like that,’ said Julia quite serene. ‘If you don’t come then I won’t either, I couldn’t go without you when our party’s in the state it’s in.’ She spoke gaily, certain that Claire did not mean what she said.
‘But, my dear, Max would never forgive me if I was the cause of your not going just because I had an aunt who was taken ill on the platform. My dear, he’d never speak to me again. She’s been enough nuisance to him already, you can’t mean to say you’d let her break the whole thing up.’
‘Well, if you don’t go, I won’t.’
‘But look, I shall be coming on in a few days, to-morrow probably.’
‘No, Claire my dear, no Claire no Julia. Besides,’ she said, more serious, ‘you know what the doctor said, there’s nothing really the matter with her, is there? Why don’t you let her go home if that is what she really wants?’
‘Why here’s that idiotic Robert,’ Claire said. As he came up to them foolishly smiling, she said:
‘Have you been drinking?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you drunk?’
‘No, of course I’m not.’
‘There’s no of course about it as I know you,’ she said, examining him.
Julia explained. ‘It’s too awful, Robert dear,’ she said. ‘I’ve gone and upset your aunt. You see the great news is that we’ve been told to get ready to go at last and I rushed into her room and told them and she thought it was meant for her and was so disappointed when Claire told her she couldn’t be moved yet, poor darling,’ she said cheerfully.
‘What are we to do about her?’ Claire said to Robert.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Then why don’t you know?’ Claire was always much harder on him when others were present. When they were alone she was another person and knowing this made her easier for him to bear.
‘She’s not my aunt,’ he said and laughed.
‘She is, aren’t we married? Oh, now my darlings, you see what I have to put up with.’
‘Well, what do you want to do?’ he said shrewdly.
‘You wouldn’t think it very awful if I left her now, would you?’ Claire began. ‘You see she has Nanny and her friend to look after her and she does seem so much better at last. Of course she is awfully weak and it was rather naughty of Julia to come in like that and upset her, but really when all’s said and done I think she is getting to the age,’ Miss Fellowes was fifty-one, ‘when it’s better for them to do what they want when they are ill. D’you remember what the doctor said when your father died, but of course she’s not as bad as that, only she does worry me so, I’m afraid she’s not so well really. Robert, think now, what d’you say about it? You don’t think it would be very awful of me, really?’
‘Of course not,’ he said and he had only been waiting to agree with whatever it was she wanted. ‘Of course not,’ he said.