“It was kind of you to call to us, Dufferin,” said Sir Percy. “We thank you for it. We were uneasy, Mellicent and I, and Rachel was not with us; she was upstairs with all of you. Yes, our poor Harriet and trouble! They must be kept farther apart. Taking something by mistake and getting a fright! Something that did not matter. But if it had mattered! Rachel must speak to her about it. Is Rachel ready to be taken home?”
“She is doing us the kindness of remaining with us tonight,” said Godfrey, “and we are accepting it gratefully, Hardisty. We are dependent upon it.”
“Oh yes, Rachel is not coming then? Well, I will fetch her in the morning. I shall be wanting to know how it all is. But I shall not come in, you know. I shall stay outside, and Rachel will come out to me. Can I take you, Dufferin?”
Godfrey walked straight into the library and flung himself back in a chair.
“Well, what an experience! What an evening for us all! We couldn’t have lived through it if we had been prepared for it beforehand. I should have fought clean shy of it; I make no bones about that. Gregory, my poor child, the worst of it fell on you. You have all had a rough-and-tumble time in your youth. I ought to have been able to save you, but the power was not in me; things have been too much. Griselda, my pretty one, you look all wan and worn out. Come to your father.” Godfrey drew his daughter to his knee and played with her hand. “Well, that was a moment, when we realised the whole thing was moonshine! It was a reward for what we had been through, that relief! And your mother found it a relief too. Oh, yes, she did; there is no doubt about it. She didn’t want to leave us all as much as she thought. She wasn’t quite so near to the end of her tether.”
“She found it more of a relief than anyone,” said Jermyn.
“She didn’t make any secret of it,” said Matthew.
“That showed great quality,” said Gregory.
“I declare for a second I thought it was all up,” said his father. “I faced it for a moment. For a breathing space I knew what it was to be a widower. Ah, your mother did not know what she was putting before my eyes.”
“She did. She gave all her attention to preparing our way,” said Gregory. “No remorse.”
“All the life she had left, to it!” said Grisėlda. “Fancy giving it to that! I always wondered if it were all true, the French Revolution and all of it. Now I know it is.”
“People dying so mannerly!” said Gregory. “It is a great test.”
“Yes, yes, it is, Gregory,” said Godfrey. “Some people are equal to it. Your mother is one of them. She is a high-spirited, high-minded woman under the little foibles that make our life a burden, that cause us an anxiety that burdens our lives. You have hit the mark. But I think, for all that, her best moment was when Dufferin told her she had built the whole thing on air. I hold to that.”
“The other moments would have been less satisfactory,” said Griselda.
“My Grisel, you are feeling more cheerful!” said her father.
“I wish I were a girl, and could have a little attention,” said Jermyn. “I feel I need it.”
“Some comfort,” said Gregory.
“So you do, my poor boys. So you do, my darl — my dear sons,” said Godfrey. “I wish you were all of an age when I could pet and cosset you, and make up to you for what you have been through. But we shall pick ourselves up, and go forward as if it hadn’t happened. It was only a mistake after all.”
“It was not that, Father,” said Matthew.
“Oh, well, well, it was regretted. And if that is not a mistake, what is?”
“The mistake was that the stuff was harmless,” said Matthew.
“Very well, it was harmless, wasn’t it?” said his father. “Why this arguing on an occasion like this? It doesn’t really seem suitable. And we are tired out enough already.”
“Well, I hardly am,” said Rachel, coming into the room. “I still feel rather stimulated. I hope Percy felt it, that I could not go home with him. I have come to join you in disloyalty to Harriet. She would hardly expect to escape it. I have just been disloyal to her to her face. ‘My dear,’ I said, when she was afraid she would not sleep, ‘it is not your fault that you are not in your last sleep. You do keep changing your mind. It is everything or nothing with you.’ But I think she will sleep; she is very tired. It takes a great deal to exhaust her enough, doesn’t it?”
“She won’t change her mind again, will she?” said Griselda.
“No, no, my child. She could not be up to so much.”
“It cannot be called a heroic thing to do,” said Matthew.
“I suppose it cannot be called that,” said Rachel.
“No, no, don’t you agree with him, Rachel. You stand up for my poor wife,” said Godfrey, leaning back and relinquishing his daughter without sign of consulting her.
“It wasn’t anything worse than a hastiness of spirit,” said Jermyn.
“Yes, it was worse; it was deliberate,” said Matthew.
“I wish we knew how she felt before she did it, the steps in her mind that led up to it,” said Gregory.
“We mustn’t want to go as far as she did,” said Jermyn.
“Well, I hope there are some things you will stop short of,” said Godfrey, opening his mouth in concession to the stage matters had reached.
“There are probably a good many,” said Rachel.
“Yes, yes, there are, Rachel,” said Godfrey, sitting forward. “You are right to make us see that Harriet was not to blame in what she did. She is a fine creature, making a fine effort against her weaknesses. Well, it is no good my sitting here, making an exhibition of myself. How you can all hold your heads up puzzles me. I will take myself off and leave you free of the sight of me. Harriet will sleep, Rachel, you say? Well, I shall sleep the better for knowing that. Oh, well, laugh then, all of you. Laugh. I am glad you have the heart for it; I have not. I am thankful you have something to laugh at, and glad if I have given it to you. Rachel, again I express to you my gratitude.”
“Why is it more natural to be disloyal to your mother than your father?” said Rachel. “It ought to be the other way round.”
“He is more helpless,” said Jermyn, “but it would be natural to take advantage of that.”
“We can’t explain chivalry,” said Griselda. “It is a feeling I have never understood.”
“Does it throw light on it that we could never show it to Mother?” said Gregory. “To think we shall have to meet her, when some of us must have been the cause!”
“Will she be able to meet us?” said Matthew.
“I suppose not, if she thinks of the past,” said Griselda.
“We are all quite blameless,” said Matthew.
“It is humbling to feel we are impossible without meaning to be,” said Rachel. “Godfrey, why are you coming back when you had left us to be disloyal to you?”
“Oh, that is what you are doing, is it?” said Godfrey, crossing the room with his eyes on the chimney-piece, and his hand holding his coat together to cover some initial disarray. “Yes, here are my studs behind the clock! I remembered I had put them there. I was asking before dinner if I had better wear them, and Griselda voted for the plain ones, those I actually wore. I don’t know if you noticed them; I expect you did not; that is the point of them, that they do not strike the eye. I thought she was right; I agreed with her; I don’t care to see a man bedizened. What do you think?” Godfrey held the studs before his shirt, waiving compunction in the matter of its expanse. “I don’t think they would have done me any good, do you? I think the effect was better without them, just careless enough. I think I shall have them made into something for Harriet. Though I don’t know that I shall. I might come across some links to match them some time. One never knows what will turn up. There can be no harm in being all of a piece. Well, good-night again.”