“You look forward, Father. You see a future. I find it hard to do so.”
“You are good to me, my son. I am happy in the child I can acknowledge. You have not spoken of your thoughts.”
“Father, you have led a strange life, silent, solitary, burdened. You trod the way of transgressors, and it was hard.”
“It had a meaning. It led to the future. You are right to pity your mother. She trod a treacherous way.”
“Father, I have wondered if things were like this. Your affection asked to be explained. It went beyond an uncle’s feeling. I used to fear the thought might strike my mother.”
“It is hard not to be wise after the event,” said Julius, looking into his face. “Are you sure of what you say? Are you not wondering why you did not fear it?”
“I may be confusing the thoughts I have, with those I might have had. It is a moment of confusion. Well, I will go to the children. I will try to feel to them as what they are to me.”
“No, do not do so. That is the thing to forget. Be to them what you have been. You could probably be nothing more. And, as I said, do not ask too much of them. Your mother would not wish it.”
“She does not wish it, Father. Those are the words I would use. And her wish is as ever mine.”
Rosebery went up to the schoolroom and paused within the door. His expression changed, as though he were taken aback by what he saw. The children were seated at the table, Adrian reading and the others playing a game. They glanced at him, but as he was silent, did no more. He stood with his eyes on them, his feelings showing in his face. At length he came forward, stood with his eyes on the board, suggested a move, and waited for the game to end. It did so soon. They were not at ease under his scrutiny.
“No, do not start another game, Francis,” he said, as if there had been some sign of this. “Put the board and the pieces away. I have something to say to you, that will put such things out of your thoughts.”
“Is it something about Aunt Miranda?” said Adrian, looking up.
“What makes you say that? Have you noticed any change in her of late?”
“No, but Bates said the doctor told her she could not live very long.”
There was a pause.
“And knowing that, you settled to games and books?” said Rosebery, as if he could not believe his words.
“What were we to do?” said Francis. “Doing nothing would help neither her nor us.”
“Absorption in amusements suggests you were not in need of help.”
“Those might be the right words, if we cared more for her, and she for us. As it is, we are not in your place. We cannot give up our lives to anxiety. It could not be strong enough in us. And she may be ill for a long time.”
“She will not be,” said Rosebery.
“Is she dead?” said Adrian.
“She is what you mean by the word. Never again will you hear her voice, catch the sound of her footfall on the stairs. The first chapter of your life is ended.”
Alice and Adrian met each other’s eyes, a smile threatening to appear on their lips.
“Will it make much difference?” said Adrian, as if the words fell from him.
“Perhaps it will make no difference, Adrian,” said Rosebery.
“It will make a difference indeed,” said Francis, rising to his feet. “We have had great generosity from her, and shall remember her with gratitude. If we did not earn her affection, the reason may have been in ourselves.”
“It is spoken like a man, Francis. I am glad you have such feeling, and the will and courage to express it; and I will take you to speak for all. And if you did not win her heart, I may myself have been to blame. I may have taken too large a share of it. And I cannot find it in me to regret it. The memory will be my life.”
“Is Uncle upset?” said Alice.
“If that is the word you would use, with your present command of words,” said Rosebery, just smiling. “He is facing his own grief.”
“Shall we all go on in the same way?” said Adrian.
“We all shall not. I shall go on in a different way, a different man. You may do as you suggest; but even you may not find everything so much the same.”
“He meant on the surface,” said Alice.
“Yes, on the surface you will go on in the same way,” said Rosebery, in a lifeless tone, turning to the door. “How far it is the same underneath only you will know.”
“Will you give Uncle our love?” said Alice.
“I will, and I am glad to take the message. I hoped to have one.”
“It is a good thing words were put into your mouth,” said Francis to his sister, as the door closed.
“And a better that they were put into yours. What would have happened to us without them? Enough happened as it was.”
“Did you mean what you said?” said Adrian to his brother.
“I meant it in a sense. We cannot all follow your line of simple self-exposure.”
“Words do not mean everything.”
“So the heart knoweth its own bitterness.”
“Adrian’s heart has no bitterness to know,” said Alice.
There was some mirth, and in the midst of it Rosebery returned, laid a photograph on the table, cast his eyes over the three faces and left the room.
“What if words had been put into his mouth?” said Francis.
“He seemed to do better without them,” said his sister. “Perhaps they were denied him on purpose. I think the providers of them are on his side.”
“Are we supposed to be joking?” said Adrian.
“No, we are supposed to be sorrowing. We are joking.”
“Do you think Rosebud is listening at the door?”
“No,” said Francis; “that is a thing he would be ashamed of.”
“That would in an ordinary way be true, Francis,” said Rosebery, opening the door fully. “But he happened to be pausing in a natural preoccupation, and to catch what was said. And he has something to ask of you all. Will you grant it to him?”
“We do not know what it is,” said Alice.
“I think I can assure you it is nothing on a large or impossible scale. You are not strangers to me.”
“We will grant it, if we can,” said Francis.
“Then I will ask you to give up calling me behind my back what you would not call me to my face,” said Rosebery, his tone not making the best of this custom. “To do what my mother would wish, now that she can no longer enforce it.”
“We will try to remember,” said Alice.
“And will you crown the assurance by completing your answer now?”
“We will try to remember, Cousin Rosebery,” said Alice, in a light, conscious tone, glancing at the window.
“And you, Adrian?”
“I will try to remember, Cousin Rosebery.”
“Francis, you are perhaps beyond the age for receiving such suggestion. But may I take silence for consent?”
“Yes, indeed you may.”
“Yes, indeed you may—” said Rosebery, bending his head and using a musical note.
“Yes, indeed you may, Cousin Rosebery,” said Francis, glancing at the others and suppressing a smile.
“Then I will leave you in the assurance that this little service will be rendered to my mother and me.”
There was a pause after he had gone.
“It is much to ask,” said Francis. “And it is entirely for himself. He has waited until no one else benefits by it.”
“Are we going to keep the promise?” said Adrian.
“We will take a middle course and call him ‘Rosebery’. That will be easier than the other, indeed the easiest of all.”
“It was hard to say ‘Rosebud’,” said Alice. “It would comfort him to know. It was like missing out the ‘Aunt’ in ‘Aunt Miranda’.”
“Shall we let Pettigrew know we have changed?” said Adrian. “Or would it look as if we made resolves when Aunt Miranda died?”