“You give us comfort, Doctor,” said Godfrey. “You speak to us heartening words. Your mission is to heal both bodies and minds. We are grateful to you for your healing of both.”
“You are grateful rather soon,” said Dufferin, taking his leave. “And I shall not heal Harriet. I can do nothing, but I hope time and her own power of recovery can.”
“We hope it with you, Doctor. And if there is no foundation for the hope, we are still thankful to you for giving it to us. Well, my children, if it were not for you, I should be a lonely man to-day. We must brace ourselves to meet without flinching what is sent to try us like steel in the flame.”
“It is hard on Mother to be used as fuel,” said Jermyn.
“Ah, yes, and she did not flinch,” said his father.
“She did, I am thankful to say. It would be an impossible memory if she had not,” said Jermyn.
“She is the most fortunate of any of us at the moment,” said Matthew.
“She is, Matthew. That is our comfort,” said Godfrey.
“I think she is the least fortunate,” said Griselda.
“You speak the truth, Griselda. You of all of us have dared to speak it,” said her father. “My sons, we must not be behind. We must quit ourselves like men.”
“How fearful if we should succeed!” said Gregory.
“Ah, we cannot judge by the surface. The heart knoweth its own bitterness,” said Godfrey with simple understanding. “And there is a gleam of hope yet. The specialist is to come. We can’t be certain that we shall not hear a better word. The bigger the man, the larger the view.”
“You have decided after all to give him an ear?” said Matthew.
“Now why in the world take that tone?” said Godfrey, turning roundly on him. “Why should I hurt an old friend’s feelings? For what reason in the world should I do that? Dufferin has been a good friend to us.”
“No one can accuse you of ingratitude,” said Gregory.
“No, no one can,” said Godfrey with a sigh. “If there is anything I can do to serve anyone who has served my wife, that thing is done.”
“What time does the specialist come to-morrow?” said Griselda.
“I do not know,” said Godfrey. “I shall not need to discover. It will make no difference. Whatever time he comes I shall be waiting for him.”
“So shall we all,” said Matthew.
“Well, I didn’t say you wouldn’t. I should hope you would. It didn’t occur to me that anything else would be possible.”
“You made the statement about yourself,” said his son.
“Well, so did you, didn’t you? When are you going to stop insinuating, and throwing up yourself in the worst possible light? We know you are worked up and worried, my poor boy. You understand better than any of us the inner meaning of our trouble. I daresay we don’t any of us face what you are facing. Ah, now, don’t look as if you were misunderstood.”
“I am not so easily understood,” said Matthew in a gruff mutter. “No one else is thinking of letting this upheaval change his life. I got a glimpse of what Mother thought I ought to do, when I saw her lying ill. I see what she has always meant. I may go to London to get my life into shape there. She will come back and find her black sheep the whitest in the fold.”
“My dear boy!” said Godfrey, approaching him with an uncertain step, that seemed to represent a doubt of hearing aright. “I don’t know what to say. If my words did not fail me, my spirit would. Not many things could make up to me for your mother’s illness; but it reconciles me to our parting, that you will be using the time to ensure her joyful return. And this is what you were thinking, when you seemed a thought strained and out of sorts! Your heart was full to bursting, and I hadn’t an inkling of the depths within you. If anyone understands it now you have said a word, it is your father.”
“I rather feel I put the last straw that day when I drove her away from breakfast,” said Matthew, lifting his head and speaking more easily; “the day when she went to Dufferin to get what she thought she wanted. I did not know how ill she was, and it was I who should have known. I had better go and learn the things I ought to know. The other work comes later, if it comes at all.”
“My boy, my heart at once aches and cries aloud. My tongue cleaves to my mouth and is silent. Here I have been going my unconscious way, with you at my side, heartsick, racked by remorse! I ought to have gauged your nature. You and I will go our way together.”
Godfrey took Matthew’s arm and led him from the room, addressing himself to his purpose in letter as well as in spirit.
Chapter XIV
“There, My Dear one, there, my own, you are just going from one haven to another,” said Godfrey, as he followed the chair that bore his wife, conscious but recognising no one, from his house. “We will soon have you home now, for it will be home where your husband sees you every day. No, it isn’t good-bye. I shall be over to see you in the morning.”
Godfrey bent over Harriet’s hand, while her eyes rested vacantly on him, and turned at once to the house, openly giving no meaning to the empty parting; and the carriage containing Harriet, Gregory and a nurse, moved down the drive. The father went swiftly to the library and almost burst open the door.
“My poor child, my poor boys, I fear you are upset. You should not have been allowed to witness what you have. It is a ghastly thing for you to see your mother taken from her home in her helplessness. It may well make an impression that will go with you to your graves. I ought to have shut you up and taken it all on myself. And I put myself under it as far as I was able. I saw you safe in here, and gathered the whole thing on to my own shoulders. But we wish we had done more, the more we have done. I declare I could find it in me to blame myself.”
“Would you see anyone, Sir Godfrey?” said Buttermere in a hushed tone, putting his head round the door instead of throwing it wide in his usual way. “Mr. Bellamy is coming up the drive.”
“Yes, yes. Show him in. We have no secrets,” said the master in a voice correspondingly clear. “We are quite prepared to see our friends. Griselda, it is only the rector. What are you running away for?”
“Mother seemed not to like me to see too much of him,” said Griselda, pulling her hand from her father’s and escaping from the room.
“Ah, her father has sympathy with her,” said Godfrey, sighing. “That is to be the lie of things now, I see, this following her wishes. Well, I shall make it my life to do the same, until she comes back to us. And then we shall all do it doubly of course. Well, so here is the rector coming to see us! I suppose it is because of all this happening. How it has got about so soon puts me at a loss. Well, we have done nothing to be ashamed of. Few men have thought less of themselves than I have the last week. Well, Rector, you find us a broken family to-day. My wife has to spend a little while away from us. No doubt you have heard. The time may not be long, but we are finding it hard to begin it.”
“Haslam, all theories of pastoral duty go to the winds, but my wish to see you as a friend has forced me to indulge myself. You know how I have looked up to your wife, how I have felt myself the weaker, smaller creature. You can’t feel it more wrong than I do that I should be strong and useless while she is laid aside.”
“My dear boy, we appreciate what you say. At this moment such words are as oil poured into our wounds. We do not hail you as useless while you can say them.”
“It has come very heavy on all of them,” said Bellamy, looking round. “Is Griselda more upset than she has to be?”
“Ah, knocked utterly on the ground,” said Godfrey in a deep tone. “Laid out so completely that she has to go to her room. We none of us feel a jot or a tittle compared with her. Well, in a sense a mother gives everything to her only girl.”