‘Well, Miss Pilbeam,’ said the latter, ‘I have come to give you proof of what you have heard. We don’t want you in danger of thinking a ghost has sprung on you.’
‘I am rejoiced to see the proof, Mr Sullivan,’ said Miss Pilbeam, as she shook hands.
‘Show Father what you are doing,’ said Eleanor, to the children.
‘They are hardly in a state to apply themselves. I am just reading aloud. That will steady their nerves.’
‘Poor little things! They will be more themselves tomorrow. And what is Nevill doing?’
Nevill just glanced at his mother and maintained his flow of words, drawing his finger down the page with an effect of keeping his place.
‘Are you reading, dear?’
‘Yes, him and Miss Pilbeam. Honor and Gavin aren’t.’
‘What is the book about?’
‘Don’t talk to him while he reads,’ said Nevill, and resumed the pursuit.
‘It is a very good imitation,’ said Fulbert.
His son gave him a look, and turned the page as his finger reached the bottom of it.
Hatton entered the room, and he looked at her and hesitated, and then took the open book in both his hands and came to her side.
‘It is time for your rest,’ she said.
‘He will read in bed,’ said Nevill.
‘No, you must go to sleep in bed,’ said Eleanor, at once.
‘He will read first,’ said her son.
‘He is still a little shy of me,’ said Fulbert.
‘Come and say good-bye to Father and me,’ said Eleanor.
Nevill approached her, keeping his eyes from Fulbert.
‘Mr Ridley will come back soon. Not stay away a long time like Father. And then Mother will have a nice house.’
‘He tried to comfort me after you had gone. He has got into the habit of saying all the comforting things he can think of,’ said Eleanor, hardly giving enough attention to her words.
‘Miss Pilbeam’s father is really going to marry again,’ said Gavin.
Eleanor turned inquiring eyes on Miss Pilbeam.
‘Yes, I heard the news last night,’ said the latter, in a conversational, interested tone. ‘And I shall not have my father so much on my mind. I can look forward to a time when I can think more of myself. I have not been able to be quite selfish enough in the last year.’
‘A healthy resolve, Miss Pilbeam. See that you hold to it,’ said Fulbert.
‘Miss Pilbeam’s stepmother won’t turn her out,’ said Gavin.
‘Of course she will not,’ said Eleanor. ‘Why should she?’
‘Well, it would hide the fact that she was not the father’s first wife,’ said Honor, with a slight spacing of the words. ‘I wouldn’t marry a man who had had a wife before me. If I had been Mr Ridley, I shouldn’t have liked to marry you.’
‘But Mr Ridley will marry her,’ said Nevill, in a reassuring tone to his mother.
‘I am the man married to Mother,’ said Fulbert.
‘No, Father didn’t marry her. He didn’t come back for a long time. But Mother will come and see poor Father.’
‘Mr Ridley is not coming here any more.’
‘No, because he has a house. This one is Grandma’s.’
‘Mother doesn’t want the house now,’ said Fulbert.
‘Father can live in it too,’ said Nevill, struck by a solution of all the human problems.
‘Mother and I are both staying here.’
‘Yes, until tomorrow.’
‘No, we are staying here for always.’
Nevill met his eyes.
‘Yes, dear Father can stay here,’ he said, and ran after Hatton.
‘Nevill wants to get rid of me,’ said Eleanor, her tone showing that she did not believe her words.
‘He doesn’t know what the word, marry, means,’ said Honor.
‘I hope he will know some day,’ said Fulbert, putting his arm in his wife’s.
Honor looked after them, as they left the room.
‘What is it like to have a father and no mother?’ she said to Miss Pilbeam. ‘But you liked your mother better than your father, didn’t you?’
‘I think perhaps I did.’
‘You would think so now, because your father is marrying someone else,’ said Gavin. ‘That does make people think they don’t like the person so well.’
‘Well, it doesn’t argue any great depth of nature,’ said Honor.
‘We cannot lay down rules in these matters,’ said Miss Pilbeam.
Gavin looked at his sister.
‘Do you like Father as much as you thought you did, when you believed he was dead?’ he said in a natural tone.
Honor hesitated, or rather paused.
‘Well, I don’t think so much of him; I thought he was a more remarkable man. But I am quite reconciled to his being of common clay. I think that is better for those in authority over us?’
‘Would you mind as much, if he died now?’
‘I shouldn’t think it was as great a loss. But I should mind more. I couldn’t ever bear it again.’
‘Would you die?’ said Gavin, in a grave tone.
‘If that is what people do, when they can’t bear the things that have happened.’
‘Come, don’t forget you are children,’ said Miss Pilbeam, who believed that his conversation had been unchildlike.
‘Our experience has gone beyond our age,’ said Honor, who shared the belief.
‘Something has,’ said Miss Pilbeam, smiling.
‘Well, go on reading,’ said Gavin in a rough tone.
‘That is not the way to ask.’
‘I am not asking; I am telling you to go on.’
‘And something has not,’ said Miss Pilbeam, deciding to continue to smile and resuming the book.
Eleanor and her husband went on to the schoolroom.
‘Well, Miss Mitford, I have come to see you,’ said Fulbert, ‘and to give you proof that I am flesh and blood like yourself.’
Miss Mitford rose and shook hands.
‘It is kind of you to say so,’ she said.
Fulbert laughed though his tone had hardly been without the suggestion.
‘The situation puts you at a loss, does it?’ he said observing or rather assuming that this was the case, and accordingly regarding her with eyes of enjoyment.
‘Well, it is quite outside my experience.’
‘An experience need not be so narrow, that it does not include it,’ said Fulbert, giving encouragement, where it might be needed. ‘Yours has taken place within four walls, but some of the deepest has done that.’
‘Mine has not been of that kind,’ said Miss Mitford.
‘Well, well, some of us must deal with the smaller things of life.’
‘Education is not among those,’ said Eleanor.
‘Indeed it is not. These youngsters owe you a great deal, Miss Mitford.’
‘I am sure they realize it. Don’t you, James?’ said Eleanor, appealing to her son from force of habit, as his debt was less than his sisters’.
‘Yes.’
‘Why are you not at school, my boy?’
James felt that all the difficult moments of his life culminated in this one. He had accepted his father’s return to family life as too solemn an occasion for the personal interest of his own education to have a place, and had remained at home in a grave and quiet spirit, and was reading a book to which these terms would apply.
‘It is Father’s first day at home,’ he said, in a low, uncertain voice, that awaited his parents’ interpretation.
‘But not James’s,’ said Fulbert, in an amused, rallying tone, that gave his son his answer.
‘And how are the others spending their time?’ said Eleanor. ‘I see that lessons are not in progress.’
‘I am doing nothing,’ said Isabel, at once.
‘Is that the way to make the most of your holiday?’ said her mother, her last word showing James the extent of his misapprehension.
‘I daresay it is,’ said Fulbert, resting his eyes on his daughter. ‘People must relax when they have been wrought up too far.’