Julius stood with his eyes on his wife, and suddenly spoke in an aloof, almost light tone.
“I can rise to the occasion better than that. I have the orthodox secret. Nothing is wanting to the drama. Miranda, do you guess what it is? It is near to our hearth and home. It would be like you always to have known.”
Miranda sent her eyes over his face and waited for his words. He could say them for himself. It was not for her to help him. Rosebery stood with his eyes dilated. Emotions trembled in the air.
“Miranda, I would give much to say what our son has said. Apart from one thing I can say it. But there is the one thing. At a moment like this there must often be. Do you guess what it is?”
“You are eager for me to guess. I am to say the word as well as hear it. Is that a thing to ask of me now? Tell me the plain truth. Surely the words should not be mine. Surely you are not sparing yourself.”
“I have wondered if you knew, if you had seen. Some women would have done so.”
“Father, tell her at once. She is in suspense, and that must not be. It can be no great thing.”
“I wish it was not; I wish I could think of a small one to tell her,” said Julius, in a rapid aside. “I wish I had not had this impulse. It was the shock of what she said; I was not prepared. I had thought to spare her this scene. She should have been spared.”
“Tell me the truth,” said Miranda, her eyes on their faces and her voice shrill. “Talk to me and not to each other. Tell me in a few words. Which of us should be saved?”
“Miranda, the children; you know my feeling for them. You have thought it was too great. It was not; it was the natural feeling. Do I need to say more?”
“You will say the truth and stop trying to make me say it. Say it, or my death will be upon your head.”
“Miranda, it was the time when we grew apart, in Rosebery’s early manhood. I was thrown on myself; I had to steer my course as I could; you will remember how things were. My life took on a second thread, as the first one went awry. I had a life apart from you, as you had one apart from me. It ended; the children’s mother died; it happened very soon. The tidings came from abroad of my brother’s death. I took them into my home on the ground that they were his. It was an easy thing to do; everything played into my hands. They were penniless; my brother had lost what he had; it made a plausible whole. They were too young to question or remember. Adrian was an infant and Francis three. Was it not a natural thing to do? What else could I have done?”
There was a silence that had its own force. It seemed that it could not be broken. Then Miranda spoke in an even tone, seeming to listen to each word she said.
“‘And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.’ That is what mine have done for me. This is what I have, a dead marriage, now to end in death.”
“Miranda, was it so much? It was only part of my life. And I tried to share it with you.”
“You had those children, and you forgot your child and mine. You had their mother, and you lived with her, alive and dead. How it lies clear before me!”
“I should not have told you. I shall not forgive myself.”
“You forgave yourself the thing you did. What you cannot forgive is the telling of it, and perhaps its time. And you should have waited longer. It would soon have been too late.”
“I felt the truth was between us, that we could not part with it unsaid.”
“You had lived with it unsaid. But I was not to die with it so. I was to die, having listened to it. And you have not long to live with me and my knowledge. You chose your time well.”
“I wish I had longer, Miranda. It is the wish of my heart.”
“You have not; our time is over; we have only the past that we have seen. What am I to say to you, Julius, in my last hour, on the brink of the grave? That I forgive you, my husband. What else can I say? What other word can pass lips so soon to be closed? And I say them fully. But I thank God that I have not dealt with you, as you have with me.”
Miranda’s voice ended on its hissing note. Her hands shook, and she pressed them on the arms of her chair. Her breath came shallow and rapid, and as her son approached, she suddenly threw up her arms, turned eyes on him with no sight in them, gave a long, deep sigh and was silent.
“Father, she is dead! She is gone from me, my mother! Why have you done it? Why did you think of yourself? Why could you not keep your secret? What did it matter, your personal burden, the weight on your own mind? Why did you put it on her in her weakness and age? It was for you to spare her, not to think of easing yourself. You have done an ill thing.”
“I would undo it, if I could. I was shaken by the truth. I had shared her life. I felt she should share mine. I felt I owed her the truth, when I owed her silence. I had kept it for my own sake. Would that I had kept it for hers.”
“Why should she have known you had broken faith? Why should I know it, Father? Why could we not keep our conception of you? Why should she lose it in her last hour? Why should I lose it in my hardest one? Why should I lose my mother and my father at one stroke?”
“I felt I was paying a debt to her, a debt that was too long unpaid. I did not see there was no repayment. And I had not thought the end so near. You cannot judge of my feeling. You could meet yours with an honest mind. I envy you, my son.”
“There is no need, Father. My life has been torn away. My mother is gone; my father is changed for me; my young cousins are that no longer. It is a great adjustment. I cannot make it all at once.”
“You have made a beginning,” said Julius, in another tone. “And you will do it all in time. We must not give ourselves to living in this scene and fulfilling our own parts. And there is something we owe to your mother. There must be no word of the truth. There must, if possible, be no thought of it. This is the last word of it between us. You said I should have kept the secret; you were right to say it; we will both keep it now. And you need not say it was not kept from her who suffered from it. I know it was not. I shall always know it. I shall know it when you have forgotten. I shall not have your right to forget. And now there are things to be done.”
“Let me do them with you,” said Hester, coming forward. “Yes, I have been here all the time. I had not the chance to go. When I came in with Mrs. Hume, I saw she might need my help. And then I saw she was beyond it. And then I saw that you and your son would need it.”
“Yes, we need help,” said Julius. “And you know the first help we need, the certainty of your silence.”
“The silence is so sure that we need not speak of it. We will not do so. It would seem to be a breach of it. But you have other need.”
“Father,” said Rosebery, “while you and Miss Wolsey are together, shall I go and break it to my cousins — to the children? I feel I am the one to do it. The demand on you would be great.”
“I am glad to be spared. I should hardly know what to say. I hardly know how much they felt for her.”
“Not what you and I did, Father. But possibly more than they knew. This is a time when truth comes to light.”
“Do not ask them to simulate feeling. Your mother would not ask it. She was neither near to them nor wished to be. She was open and honest with them. Let them be the same.”
“Father, do you think some unconscious suspicion influenced her, some instinctive sense of the truth?”
“No, I do not. You saw how she met it. Would you have accused me of causing her death by telling it, if you thought that?”
“You will not tell the truth to my cousins — to the children?”
“No, I shall not. It is not a thing to tell them. When they are older, it will be different. Indeed I may look to the time. And they are still your cousins. What else can they be? Do you hear nothing I say?”