Eleanor explained and Gavin listened until he understood, and then moved away.
‘What is the good of his being more alive, when he is not with the people who belong to him?’ said Honor, in a tone that seemed to anticipate a mature one of the future. ‘And he is always more alive than other people. He ought not to be even what we call dead; he ought not to be.’
‘Mrs Sullivan,’ said Ridley, as if the words broke from him, ‘what a duty you have to live for! We see how much your husband had.’
‘I am not a person fitted to carry such a burden.’
‘I have my grandchildren,’ said Sir Jesse’s voice from the hearth. ‘I do not go empty to the grave.’
Nevill looked in the direction of the voice, and going to a vase on a table, drew out some flowers and thrust them towards his grandfather.
‘They are all for Grandpa.’
‘Won’t you bring me some flowers too?’ said Regan, turning more slowly than usual, as if her response were feebler.
Nevill returned to the vase, looked back at the flowers in Sir Jesse’s hands, and ran and transferred them to Regan’s.
‘All for Grandma,’ he said, wiping his hands down his garments, as though the office were distasteful.
‘Isabel dear, sit down and try to stop crying,’ said Eleanor. ‘You know you do not help us by making yourself ill.’
Isabel obeyed as if all things were indifferent, and her mother gave a sigh as she withdrew her eyes.
‘I wonder when I shall be able to get to my own sorrow,’ she said to Ridley, with a faint smile.
Ridley met her look and swiftly touched his eyes, and Nevill ran up to him and looked up into his face.
‘All stop now,’ he told him for his guidance.
Ridley gave a smile at Eleanor.
‘“O sancta simplicitas”,’ he said.
‘What does that mean?’ said Gavin.
‘It means that childhood is sacred,’ said Eleanor.
‘You don’t think it is, do you?’ said her son.
‘What will happen when they have all stopped?’ said Graham to Daniel. ‘Is there anything left?’
‘Is there?’ said Eleanor to herself, in a tone only partly designed for the ears of others.
Daniel led her to a seat; Ridley looked at him with a change in his face; Regan turned her eyes from the hearth, and rested them for a moment upon Ridley.
Gavin detached himself from the group and went towards the door.
‘Where are you going, my boy?’ said Eleanor.
‘Upstairs.’
‘But you will be alone up there.’
Gavin continued his way.
‘Wouldn’t you rather stay down here with all of us?’
‘I don’t much like seeing people when they are like this.’
‘We cannot help being sad for Father. But we are going to do our best to be brave.’
Gavin waited as if to weigh the evidence of this, and then proceeded.
‘Don’t you mind being alone?’
‘I shouldn’t be alone, if Honor came with me.’
‘Do you want to go up, Honor?’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘It is all too much for them,’ said Luce.
‘Of course it is, my dear,’ said her mother, with a sharper note. ‘How could it not be?’
‘Always cry now,’ said Nevill, sadly. ‘It is because Father goes away.’
‘Mother, I think we must release them,’ said Luce. ‘It is all beyond their age.’
‘If release is the word, let them go, my dear, of course. But Nevill is the only one who is too young to understand.’
‘That does not make it better for them, Mother.’
‘It is him that is young,’ said Nevill.
‘We are so glad you are what you are,’ said Eleanor, smiling at him.
‘So better now,’ said Nevill, in a tone that lost its cheerfulness as he looked at Regan. ‘But not poor Grandma.’
‘Can’t you go to her and do something to make her better?’ said Luce.
Nevill went up to Regan and paused at her knee, while he considered his course. His earnest eyes fixed on her face made her smile and finally give a little laugh, and he ran back to Luce to report on his success.
‘Grandma laugh now. All laugh now,’ he said, looking round to witness the change.
Sir Jesse beckoned to him and lifted him to his knee.
‘What should we do without our little lad?’
‘Grandpa loves him too,’ said Nevill, in some surprise.
‘Hatton, I think you can take them,’ said Eleanor. ‘I am not being much help to them.’
Nevill ran towards the door with a feeling of achievement; Gavin walked out of the room and towards the stairs; Honor looked round as if she hardly realized what was happening, and got off her chair in a dazed manner and followed.
‘Come and kiss your mother, Gavin,’ said Eleanor, as if this observance might be omitted with the others.
Gavin returned, took a passive part in the embrace, and retraced his steps.
‘You will like to think of Father when you are upstairs.’
Gavin paused at a distance and looked into his mother’s face.
‘We don’t any of us seem much to like it.’
‘Of course it will make you sad. But we can hardly remember him unless we are that.’
Gavin paused for thought.
‘I think I can.’
‘Well, remember him in your own way. Good-bye, my Honor; you will think of Father too.’
‘I shan’t ever think of anyone else now.’
‘You will think of your mother too, and remember that she is alone.’
‘We are all alone now. Father was the person who held us together. It is the father who does that.’
‘I know your father did. But you still have your mother.’
‘And you have Luce and Daniel and Graham. And Grandma has Grandpa. We all have someone. But it doesn’t make it different. Father was the person who protected us.’
‘Take her upstairs, Hatton,’ said Eleanor. ‘I can feel they are safe with you.’
‘Hatton will take care of her,’ said Nevill, running at Honor’s side. ‘He will too.’
James, with an almost capering movement, came to take leave of his mother, with a view to establishing a precedent of following Hatton himself.
‘Are you going with them, my boy?’
James made another movement.
‘Do you want to go?’ said Eleanor, in a gentle, condoning manner.
‘No,’ said James, in a light tone.
‘You would rather stay down here with me?’
‘Yes, I would.’
‘Then stay, my little son. I shall like to have you. You can leave him with me, Hatton.’
‘I should like his help with Honor, madam. She needs to have one of them older than herself. She can’t take the lead today.’
‘Then go up, my boy, and comfort your little sister, and remember that you do it for your mother.’
James withdrew with a sense of having satisfactorily and even with credit laid the foundation of his future.
Mullet was awaiting the stricken group, and began at once to talk, as if she had been summoning her powers for their benefit.
‘Now here you are, safe and sound. And you have your home and Hatton and me. Some children lose it all when their father dies, but it is different with you.’
‘Why is it different?’ said Gavin.
Hatton withdrew to liberate Mullet’s gifts, and James quietly followed and went to his room.
‘Because this house belongs to your grandpa, and you will still live here with him. You won’t have to move into a small house and face a changed life.’
‘Why do people do that?’ said Gavin.
‘A dear little house,’ said Nevill, coming up to Mullet.
‘Dear, dear, the collapses and crashes there have been in my family! You would hardly believe the tale of them. First prosperity and luxury and leisure, and then downfall and poverty and trouble. Poverty in a sense of course I mean; all things are comparative. And desertion by friends is always part of it. I am thinking of a cousin of my father’s, who was a well-known physician and lived in Harley Street, which is an address for people of that kind. And they kept a butler and a cook and the usual complement of under servants. And they did much as the mood took them. Yes, their lot was cast in pleasant places. And then the curse that was hanging over them gathered and fell. There has always been this something ill-fated about our family. My uncle died, and the end of it all came. They had to take shelter under a humble roof, and keep one servant; well, one good servant from the old days, and one or two young ones it really was, though to hear the family talk, you would have thought it was a state of penury; and move out of society and face a different future. Yes, I often think of them, moving in their shabby gentility about their second-rate social round, always with that air of having come down in the world, which a truer dignity would lay aside. A morning of trivial shopping, after an interview with the rather tyrannical cook; a dose of cavalier treatment from the tradesmen instead of the accustomed respect, for that class of person is the first to show a sense of difference; an afternoon over a dreary fire, missing the friends who used to attend their frequent functions; that is my cousins’ life. I often think I have been wise in cutting right adrift from the past, that I have chosen the better part.’