‘They can make a mistake about the others,’ said Hatton. ‘And the cleverer people are, the sooner they see they have made one. And it is easier to see that out of doors.’
‘I am going to stay in,’ said Honor. ‘Then I can go down, if Father comes back and sends for me. He will want to see me, even if he is back from the dead. If he is so very different, he wouldn’t remember enough to come home. And I want to see him, whatever he is like. I don’t mind if he is a ghost.’
‘He is not a ghost,’ said Gavin, in his ordinary voice. ‘He is like he always was. Only he is pale and his face is smaller.’
‘He couldn’t be smaller, if he is the same.’
‘He could, if he had got thin.’
‘Would you like to go out, Gavin?’ said Hatton, in an easy tone.
‘I don’t mind. I can see Father when I come in.’
‘He will stay in,’ said Nevill. ‘No, he will go for a walk and hold Mullet’s hand. He will find a little nest.’
Honor waited until Mullet and her brothers had gone, and then threw herself into Hatton’s arms in a passion of tears.
‘I don’t want it to be a mistake. For a minute I thought it was true. I thought Father would come back.’
‘You know he can’t do that. You must know, if you think. But you have a great many people to love you.’
‘I haven’t. Only Grandma and Luce.’
‘You know how Gavin loves you.’
‘Does he?’ said Honor, lifting her head at the idea.
‘More than anyone else in the world. And you know that I love you.’
‘Yes,’ said Honor, relaxing her body against Hatton’s.
‘And Nevill loves you too.’
‘I don’t count Nevill. And James doesn’t like people much better than they like him. I don’t think people do. And that isn’t very much.’
‘You can’t think that Isabel does not love you.’
‘She would, if I were as old as she is. But I never shall be, shall I? Because she will get older too. And Venice only loves Isabel.’
‘And there are your big brothers.’
‘Do you mean Daniel and Graham?’ said Honor, as if Hatton were hardly likely to mean these.
‘And Mother loves you. You know that.’
‘She feels I belong to her. Gavin is the one she loves. But Mother does her duty by her children.’
‘Would you like me to read to you?’
‘If you read a book I know. Then I can half listen to the reading, and half to hear if Father comes back.’
‘Which is a book that you know?’
‘I know them all,’ said Honor. ‘You won’t read in a loud voice, will you?’
Hatton read, and Honor divided her attention as she had said, and presently slipped from Hatton’s knee and stood with an air of intense listening.
‘Father has come back,’ she said, with a sigh of simple and great relief. ‘Gavin did see him. I don’t mind if he is back from the dead. I can hear his voice, and it is the same as it used to be. I don’t mind anything as long as he is here.’
Hatton went on to the landing, and stood suddenly still, her face growing white.
‘I shall go down,’ said Honor. ‘No, I shall wait until they send for me. No, I shall go down now. I have heard his voice, and now I have heard it, I must want to see him, mustn’t I? I shall run straight up to him; I don’t mind what he is like. He will lift me up as he used to, and if he can’t do it like an ordinary man, if it is like a ghost, it will be the ghost of Father.’
She ran down the stairs and broke into the library, where Fulbert was standing with his mother. He turned and came to meet her and lifted and kissed her in his old way, and after the first onset of tears, she subsided in simple content.
‘You are the same,’ she said; ‘you are not a ghost; you don’t look so very different.’
‘I am grateful for the assurance,’ said Fulbert. ‘I hardly know how to explain myself on any other ground. I must be prepared for people’s coming to the opposite conclusion.’
‘You will always be here now. It will be like it used to be,’ said Honor, as she heard the old note. ‘But if you were alive why didn’t you come before?’
‘Father has been ill,’ said Regan, who was leaning back in her chair, pale and still but hardly spent. ‘So ill that he could not remember anything. But he will soon be well now.’
‘But that doesn’t make him a ghost. He is only like other people who have been ill.’
‘You tell people that,’ said Fulbert, ‘if they throw any doubt on my authenticity. I am of flesh and blood like themselves, even if a little less of them.’
‘Do the others know?’ said Honor, beginning to jump and quiver in anticipation. ‘I will go and tell them; I am the one to know first. They won’t think it is true at first. Only Gavin will believe it.’
‘Gavin will have his own position in future,’ said Fulbert.
Regan smiled as if she were apart from words.
Honor encountered Graham in the hall, and crying the tidings, went on to find Daniel. The young men entered, half-braced for the truth, half-prepared for some travesty of it.
‘Honor should be here with her assurance,’ said Fulbert, as he shook hands with his sons and then drew them into his embrace. ‘She protested that I was not a ghost.’
Graham turned aside, white and shaken, and Daniel stood ready to give his support to any who required it. He glanced at his grandmother, but Regan had what she needed.
Luce entered, driven by Honor, started and paled, took some steps towards her father, and threw herself on his breast. Regan surveyed the scene in sympathy, almost at ease. Regan’s tears had been shed.
‘Grandma,’ said Luce, in a hardly audible tone, as if compelled to the words, ‘does Grandpa know?’
‘Yes, he knows. He has seen your father. He will soon be here.’ Regan needed to say no more of Sir Jesse’s meeting with his son.
‘Father,’ said Luce, in a gentle tone, ‘would it be too much for you to have Isabel and Venice and James? They are having needless moments of feeling they are fatherless.’
‘It is too much, and it is not enough. Let them all come. It is the healthy and natural way.’
Honor rushed upstairs with the summons, and her sister went to the door.
‘Children,’ she said, ‘your life is going to be whole again. The cloud is lifted. Honor has told you the truth.’
She led them to their father, Isabel white and trembling, Venice crimson and with staring eyes, James uncertain and almost afraid. Fulbert embraced them in a natural way, keeping his old manner with each. Isabel staggered and nearly fell, but recovered and sat with her eyes on her father, almost in the manner of Regan. Venice’s face relaxed and her eyes began to glow instead of stare. Daniel gave them seats and treated Graham as one of them. James fidgeted round his father’s chair in his old way, until, also in the old way, enjoined to be still, and the natural words seemed to break the tension and set on foot the old life.
‘The chief actor must bear the heaviest part,’ said Daniel. ‘May we hear the tale to be told?’
‘In a word,’ said his father, while Regan’s unmoved and satisfied face showed it had been put in many to herself. ‘You read the letter I wrote to Ridley, and the other from my servant, confirming my death. I had no equals about me. The second was written and sent while I lay unconscious; they thought I was near enough to my end. I lived for months, remembering nothing, and when I came to myself and found that no letters came, I questioned the men and found how things had gone. They were in awe of your father and had not dared to confess. They had even sent my effects to your mother. I wrote and told Ridley to prepare you for the truth, followed the letter myself, and waited at the inn to recover and to hear that the way was clear. I dreaded the shock for your mother, for mine, and for you all. That letter cannot have reached him.’