“I hope we know how to honour the attitude,” said Rosebery.
“It is really the same as Uncle said,” said Adrian.
“It is exactly the same as he meant,” said Hester.
“Miss Wolsey,” said Rosebery, “we have to thank you for another service, that of rendering this occasion possible to us. Without you it had been a dark hour. It had crossed my mind that I could not face it.”
“We have no choice but to go on,” said Julius.
Adrian looked at him with his eyes filling with tears.
“Ah, Adrian, I could wish that my years did not preclude that form of relief,” said Rosebery. “It is, after all, the natural and time-honoured one. We are debarred from it by convention.”
“Adrian must envy him,” murmured Alice. “He has nothing to debar him.”
“Well, it had to come, and it is over,” said Hester. “We all felt inclined to do the same.”
“I cannot help feeling, Father,” said Rosebery, “that it is befitting that some tears should be shed, and sympathising with the one of us most entitled to shed them. I feel my mother would look with a compassionate eye on the weakness, if such it be.”
The people actually doing this were Adrian’s brother and sister.
“We should most of us look kindly on the emotion caused by our death.”
“Father, you strike your own note. To-day is to be no exception. You go through it as yourself. But we are not deceived.”
“I wish Rosebery did not do the same,” murmured Alice.
“Come upstairs and have your supper in the schoolroom,” said Bates over Adrian’s shoulder.
“Poor child!” said Hester, as he rose and disappeared.
“Miss Wolsey, I could fancy I heard a voice saying those words of me,” said Rosebery. “I cannot overcome a feeling that I have just emerged from childhood.”
“Why does he think he has done so?” said Francis to his sister.
“It is a good thing Adrian is not here.”
“It was far from my thoughts,” said Rosebery, not looking at anyone, “to work on the emotions or to make a bid for pity. I was simply uttering a thought to a possibly receptive ear.”
“Miss Wolsey finds us indeed dependent on her,” said Julius.
“I think, Father, that a tendency to be overwrought must be a feature of the occasion. We have to bear with each other.”
“I think we may say that we do so.”
“I have never been afraid to put my thoughts into words, if that is what you mean. I think to be ashamed of voicing our feelings has something in common with being ashamed of the feelings themselves.”
“It is not the accepted view,” said Francis. “It is still waters that are said to run deep.”
“I was not talking of the accepted view. I was egoistic enough to be speaking of my own.”
“We are not supposed to wear our hearts on our sleeves, though I see no harm in it.”
“There is such a thing as not having a heart to wear.”
“There can, of course, be no proof but an outward one,” said Julius.
“Rosebery thinks that Francis and I are without hearts,” said Alice.
“I think quite a different thing. I think, nay, I know, that your feeling for my mother was not a jot or a tittle of what mine was,” said Rosebery, breathing heavily.
“Why should it have been?” said Julius.
“Father, you are right. There was no reason. If I gave much, much was given.”
“Shall we have to go to the funeral?” said Francis.
“You will not have to,” said Rosebery. “The question is whether your feeling will suggest it.”
“Francis can come with you and me,” said Julius. “Adrian is too young, and I should not take a girl.”
“I think you are right that it should be a masculine prerogative. If that is the word; and in the sense of privilege it is. Miss Wolsey, may we hope to have you with us? Do your qualities put you above the feminine level in such things?”
“They will put me with the children. The feminine level is sometimes the one to be observed.”
“I shall be glad for them not to be alone,” said Julius.
“I had not thought of it, Father, being one of those who are now always alone.”
“You identify your cousins too much with yourself.”
“You are wrong. I am far from doing so.”
“Your feeling would not be what it is, if everyone shared it,” said Francis.
“That is true. But I might be glad not to walk in utter solitude. Not that I have done so hitherto. Even a few hours seem to have been too much for me.”
“They have not been good hours,” said Julius.
“Not for anyone, Father? I do not claim a monopoly of feeling.”
“Only of the deepest feeling. I have my different trouble.”
“Father, you have, and a more complex one than mine,” said Rosebery, in a tone of recollection at once sudden and guarded. “Mine is a simple sorrow, un-confused; I had almost said, unsullied. It does not fit me to follow yours.”
“We seldom meet on common ground.”
“I am trying your forbearance. I am used to having an ear, and I am not of a reticent nature. As I have said, silence does not seem to me an indication of much, or a proof of anything.”
“I have noticed you do not observe it.”
“Father, I have tried you indeed. I think there was nothing in my words to warrant that tone. Ah, it is a strange irony. I need my mother’s comfort for the loss of her. But I will make a demand on no one. I will ask for the touch of no hand, the sound of no voice. My memories must be enough.”
“You are not the only person who has a grief.”
“Father,” said Rosebery leaning forward, “am I the only person?”
“To your own mind it is clear that you are.”
“And to her who dwells with us, though veiled from our sight, what is the answer?”
“You two children may go now,” said Julius, not looking at his son. “I will come and see you later. Go upstairs and be companions for each other. We have to talk of things outside your range.”
“Miss Wolsey, those words do not apply to you,” said Rosebery, as Hester also rose. “Your scope is surely wider.”
“We will not ask her to include our family matters in it. Perhaps she will go to the schoolroom.”
“There is no perhaps about it. That is where I am going. There are things there indeed that are within my range. I am not going to let them be outside it.”
There was a silence between the men when they were alone.
“Father, things are going ill between us, and in this hour of all others of our lives. I find the new knowledge makes them harder for me. Hitherto, whatever I have been to you, I have been your only child. Now I am the least of your children. And I have to know I have long been that. It is a great change.”
“You are what you have thought you were. There is to be no word on this between us. You must know what other men know. Everything has an ear.”
“I must say the word once, Father.”
“You must not. It is unsaid.”
“I think I will have an hour alone; or an hour with my feeling that I am not alone; and perhaps in a sense to learn to be alone. Do not let me disturb you. I will go to my mother’s room.”
“You can go to the library. I am going upstairs. And when we meet again, we will meet on our usual ground.”
As Julius reached the schoolroom, he heard the young voices through the door.
“Are we ungrateful people?” said Adrian.
“Yes,” said his brother.
“I don’t want to be ungrateful.”
“Neither do we,” said Alice. “We are.”
“Would it be possible to be glad that someone was dead?”
“All things are possible, as you know,” said Francis.