“You can hardly regard it as not enough,” said Kate.
“Well, whatever it is, I am glad to feel he won’t have to go home and face the rarefied atmosphere of Lady Hardisty, without the memory of something a little more human to leaven it with,” said Agatha, suddenly seeming to thrust out her words. “I can just imagine him working himself up to greet her. And I think it is so hard on him at this point of his young experience.”
Gregory met Rachel without making any effort on her behalf, and she began to speak herself.
“Gregory, Ernest and Griselda are in the library, and I can hear Griselda crying. And it is not the sort of crying that goes with to-day. She left that off when she heard he was coming. What is the good of his stopping one kind to start another? Can he be saying anything out of his own head about your mother?”
“What makes you think that? Have you been listening at the door?”
“I could not go quite up to the door. Buttermere might have come along.”
“I should have been inclined to go in and interrupt them.”
“But they would have known I had been listening, and I should not have heard the rest. I thought Ernest was wearing his own religious look when he came in.”
Bellamy had arrived and greeted his betrothed, unaware of his betrayal of himself.
“We are to have a time to ourselves, we two! That is perfect of everyone who has planned it. People always are perfect in times of stress, and they must have been especially so to you. This is what my heart was crying out for. I felt I could bear no one but you to-day. I am a little drained out after the service. I put the whole of myself into it. Did anyone tell you about it? I had almost thought you would be there, as I was to give the address. I had half hoped it would comfort you. I thought of you in every word I wrote.”
“I shall like to read it some time,” Griselda said.
“You could not get an impression from my few rough notes. I jot down a word, and then get into the pulpit, and out it comes with a rush. I just want a hieroglyphic to start me off.”
“Ernest, what made Mother go away alone and do it, go away alone? What did she feel when she did it, all by herself? All by herself, poor Mother, poor Mother, by herself!”
“Oh, come, come now,” said Bellamy, “you must think of me, my Grisel. I cannot bear too much. You have not taken the strongest man for a husband: you must have a care for the man you have chosen. I have lived these last days in thought of you. I have thrown the whole of myself into my words of your mother, weighed every syllable I uttered, to give her only respect and compassion at this time which is a trial of our own strength. You know very little has gone well with me in my life; and now into this vista of hope and light there is come this shadow of darkness, the hint of hanging of the head; and it is getting to be much. You must remember I am a man and weak, and you are a woman and strong.”
“Your share in this is nothing to mine,” said Griselda, lifting her eyes. “It is my family who has had a tragedy, not yours. You make me feel how apart our lives are. Of course all lives must be. There is nothing to hang the head over in my mother’s being ill and helpless, unless for people who are used to hanging the head.”
“Ah, who is to be used to it, and who is not? It is not I who would say. Even her helplessness will be thrown at us. Family taints and what not will be bandied about our heads. But I am not to be the first to swirl the whispers about you. My part will be to stand on guard.”
“It has all come to me beforehand through you,” said Griselda, breathing deeply.
“Did not I tell you what my part would be? My whimperings were to throw my true self up in relief. Tell me you guessed their purpose. I am such a play-actor that I like the light and shade. Come, you are learning to know me. You must learn. Think how I have learned to know you.”
Griselda stood with her head down, and Rachel and Gregory found it the moment to enter the room.
“Lady Hardisty, Griselda has been trying to quarrel with me, and making such a gallant effort that she has almost succeeded. She cannot get used to my posing ways, and cannot teach me not to bring them out before her. But you will let me stay to dinner, and be one of the family, and her heart will be softened when she sees me making a personal sacrifice, and pronouncing grace as if it were a difficult and important duty.”
“Yes, yes, my boy, stay and be with us on this first evening of our new life,” said Godfrey, crossing the room with a progressively widening step. “It still seems it can’t be much of a life to us; but we may pull up and get going as we did before, as my dear wife would wish. Now, do you know, here is a thing to be told! If there is any one of her children who feels this, it is Matthew. He is simply laid on the ground by it, he of all of them! I hadn’t an inkling he cared for his mother so much. It shows how blind we can be. Well, now the thing is, he is not coming down to dinner. He is to remain alone in his room. My heart rose and sank at the same time. I would give a good deal if his mother could have realised how he felt for her. There doesn’t seem any point in it now. Of course there is more point in it than ever. She looks down on us and knows more about us than we know ourselves, and for any mortal frailty makes more excuse than we should dare to make.”
“That will be a great advantage for you,” said Rachel. “It is really very nice of Harriet. So many people in her place seem so different, from what people say, and expect too much. They are sometimes quite a strain. Making more excuse than we dare to make is superhuman, because all has been done that can be done. Of course Harriet is that now.”
“Ah, yes, we shall appreciate our wife and mother as never before,” said Godfrey.
Chapter XXIV
Mrs. Christy, Sitting at a business interview with Dominic Spong, perceived from her window the sight familiar to her of a young man anxiously awaiting admission at her door.
“Now, Matthew, it is a long time since you paid a visit to your future mother-in-law. It is a good thing that my love does not alter when it alteration finds, that in that respect I am at one with the poet. Now if I come to the door I must not shirk what the duty involves. You will have a woman quite without false pride for your wife’s mother. ‘Be proud of what you can do, not of what you can’t,’ is my motto. ‘Thank you,’ I say, ‘my dignity is safe.’ Not that practical matters take the whole of my attention. I have come from quite an abstruse discussion with Mr. Spong. My money matters make no very great demand, but he always accuses me of having quite a man’s mind. It is a most unfeminine thing to plead guilty to, but I must take my stand where he places me.”
“Can I see Camilla,” said Matthew, in a quick, harsh voice.
“If you will adjust your position a little, Matthew,” said Dominic from the background, his measured tone suggesting entertainment, “you will have no reason to find fault with the evidence of your senses.”
Matthew turned and laid his hand on Camilla’s arm.
“Any more than,” proceeded Dominic, “your betrothed appeared to have to find it with that of hers, when her ears informed her of your arrival. I think, Mrs. Christy, that you and I will discover ourselves Monsieur and Madame de Trop, unless we remove ourselves from the threat of that position.”
“We will give the lovers the back room to themselves, and continue our researches into my financial mysteries in the large one, Mr. Spong.”
“I suspect that, in spite of our advantage in the matter of the room, they are at a time when they are more to be envied than we are,” said Dominic in a moved tone, as he followed.