“A nice, consistent metaphor!” said Gregory.
“Oh, well, is it? It was what I meant anyhow; it expressed my thought. Well, I am glad we are having friends this afternoon; it will help us to get the taste of Spong out of our mouths. He won’t count for much among the rest, though he is dead sure to turn up. Not that I would choose to speak in that way of an old friend. I have an excuse. Poor old Spong! I believe we make a good deal of difference to him, and I am glad we do. Our friends have been very kind in flocking about us since we were left to ourselves. We hardly have a day alone.”
The afternoon was to illustrate Godfrey’s words.
“I think we are really here too often,” said Agatha. “We might not have a home of our own.”
“Oh, well, Mrs. Calkin, I know how you appreciate young life about you. With all this youth and promise in my house, I feel I cannot do otherwise than share it. You will find Gregory waiting for you over there, ready to give some time to you.”
There was a change in Godfrey’s touch as a host since Harriet had left him.
“It really seems unnecessary to shake hands,” said Geraldine. “We shall quite forget that we are guests.”
“Oh, well, Miss Dabis, as long as it makes a change for you.”
Agatha moved on with a modified expression, passed by Gregory with a kindly, easy smile, and went up to Dominic.
“We have met here several times lately, have we not, Mr. Spong?”
“Yes, we have,” said Dominic with grave appreciation.
“It seems an irony of fate that Lady Haslam should not be here to witness her children’s developing lives, when she herself has laid the foundations of them.”
“Mrs. Calkin, it is a circumstance that makes us simply stand still and say, ‘God’s ways are not as our ways.’”
“It has been such a relief to me that Sir Godfrey has been able to recover his spirits. I hardly dared to hope it would not be beyond him.”
“It is a thing we must regard with the greatest thankfulness,” said Dominic, just glancing at Godfrey and withdrawing his eyes. “And, Mrs. Calkin, there is one thing we have to remember. ‘The heart knoweth its own bitterness.’”
“Indeed, we do have to remember it. There is no need to remind me of that,” said Agatha in a changed, controlled tone. “I carry that with me, the essential knowledge of it. After what I have been through, that goes without saying.”
There was a pause.
“Mrs. Calkin, you must allow me to thank you for your service to the youngest boy. As the lawyer, and I may say as the friend of the family, I feel personally grateful.”
“I have tried to do what was in my power. It seemed the least I could attempt.”
“It must be a wonderful thing,” continued Dominic, “to take the mother’s place to a youth on the verge of manhood.”
“Yes, well, do you know,” said Agatha, recovering on this sufficient ground, and seeming in honesty to make a reluctant admission, “I believe that is what I have done. He comes to me with his troubles and perplexities, as if he had never known any other guide. It is a great thing, as you say — I think one does the work better for realising it — to guide the footsteps of a young man at the dangerous place, and to feel that one is requiting in that way his generous trust. I say to myself when I see him coming in, so affectionate and full of appeal, ‘Am I doing all that is in me to repay this young creature for what is so spontaneously given?’”
Dominic met this degree of evidence with a slow shake of his head.
“He is such a friendly boy, so disappointed if one of us is out,” said Geraldine.
Dominic swayed from one sister to the other.
“A mother’s experience must come through,” said Agatha, “just because it must.”
“These soothing illusions!” said Geraldine.
“Miss Dabis,” said Dominic, in a manner concerned and taken aback, “no one has ever thrown doubt upon the truth that single women have opportunities as valuable and satisfying as those of their married sisters. I thought that was a certainty by this time established.”
“Why, did anyone question it?” said Geraldine.
“They did when I was single,” said Rachel, “before the certainty was established, you know.”
“Lady Hardisty, I think you are in popular parlance pulling our leg,” said Dominic. “And personally I cannot retaliate, as I could not be accused of either figuratively or literally performing that office for a lady.”
“Griselda, pour out the tea,” said Rachel, “and give Mr. Spong something to hand before he reyeals his true nature. It is extraordinary how everyone has a true nature, even when you would not think it possible. I believe natures are truer in those cases.”
“Ah, my little hostess, so you are looking after us all, are you?” said Godfrey, throwing one leg over the other.
“It is so painful to me to see this house without its mistress,” said Agatha, taking her stand by Rachel and stirring her cup. “She is in my mind every moment I am here. That things have to go on, and do go on, is of course a ground for thankfulness, but their very going on causes something very near to a heartache.”
“Very near,” said Rachel. “That is an excellent way of putting it. We are reminded that things will go on after we are dead, that people will be happy, actually be that, when we are not anything. And yet it would not do to have quite a heartache.”
“I suppose we ought not to feel it. We can do nothing while we are here for those who have passed before.”
“You were thinking what we could do for them before they passed, if we could prove we should never be happy afterwards?”
“They would not feel that, though we cannot suppress a tendency to feel it for them,” said Agatha, and added half to herself:
“‘Better by far you should forget and smile,
Than that you should remember and be sad.’
I am convinced that that would be — that that is my dear husband’s feeling towards my life.”
“People improve so tremendously when they are dead,” said Rachel. “We see they do when we compare our own feelings. Of course poets ought not to found their poems on their baser side. And they don’t, do they?”
“It is Christina Rossetti, the great woman poet,” said Agatha, looking in front of her.
“Well, poets generally write as if they were dead. You see she feels exactly like your husband. It is we normal people who have nearly a heartache because people do not remember and are not sad.”
“It does almost amount to not remembering,” said Agatha, her words seeming to break forth. “In this case the absent one may return, and see for herself how things have gone without her hand on the helm. It is a heart-piercing thought.”
“You do make it seem that it all ought to be stopped. You couldn’t prevent Gregory from attending the working party, could you? I have less influence over him.”
“No. No. That is a thing I could not do. I am almost sure I could not. He comes entirely for his own satisfaction.”
“Satisfaction! It has a dreadful sound. I do agree with you. But if nothing can be done!”
“It was actually in her own home that I meant. Somehow I cannot throw it off, that her being away should make so little difference. I could almost feel a little disappointed.”
“Of course it is awful to see human happiness,” said Rachel.
“I think you know that was not my meaning.”
“That is what I always mean.”
“It is not always safe to judge other people by ourselves.”
“I have always found it absolutely reliable.”
“I think you are in jest,” said Agatha with a forbearing smile, “or at any rate between jest and earnest. Your sense of humour is too exuberant.”