“I know it. Can I see her?”
“Yes,” he answered.
“Now?”
“You must wait till tomorrow. Then Jeffers can drive you to the hospital.”
“But I want to see her at once.”
“You could not see her at this time of day. She is very ill. She may not know you. Give yourself time to grow accustomed to this grief.”
He looked so wise sitting there in his mulberry smoking jacket and little velvet cap, that I felt a certain comfort in looking at him.
“It is too much,” I said suddenly. “This… and Joliffe…”
“Joliffe?” he said quickly.
I knew I would have to tell him, so I did so.
He was silent.
“Did you know that he already had a wife?” I asked.
“If I had I should have spoken up. But it does not surprise me. What shall you do?”
“I don’t know. I was going to talk it over with my mother.”
“She must not know. It gave her great gratification to believe you had someone to look after you.”
“No, she must not know.”
“You will have to decide what you are going to do.”
“I know.”
“You could, of course, stay here. You could resume your post with me. It would be a solution.”
For the first time since Joliffe’s wife had told me the truth I felt a faint gleam of comfort.
Mr. Sylvester Milner drove with me to the hospital. He waited in the carriage while I went in.
When they took me to the room in which my mother lay I scarcely recognized her, so thin had she become. She had not the strength to sit up, nor to move very much, but she knew me and a great joy came into her eyes. I knelt by the bed and I could not bear to look at her so I took her hand and held it against my cheek.
Her lips moved faintly: “Janey…”
“I am here, dearest,” I said.
Her lips moved but her voice was so faint that I had to bend my head to hear it. “Be happy, Janey. I am… because it’s turned out so well for you. You have Joliffe…”
She could not say more. I sat by the bed, her hand in mine.
I must have sat for almost an hour until the sister came and told me I must go.
Mr. Sylvester Milner and I drove back to Roland’s Croft in silence.
Before the week was out she was dead. In less than twelve days I had been struck two terrible blows. I think one took my mind off the other. Such a short while ago I would not have believed either possible. I had come to my mother to tell her of my troubles and she was no longer there. That seemed even more difficult to grasp than that I was no longer Joliffe’s wife. Deep in my heart ever since I learned of his taking the Kuan Yin from the showcase I had been ready for anything Joliffe might have done. Somewhere at the back of my mind had been the uneasy thought that there was something not quite real about our romantic meeting and our hasty marriage. But that my mother who had always been with me should be dead was hard to accept. And the thought that she had been dying while I was being so carelessly gay in Paris wounded me deeply.
Mr. Sylvester was a great comfort. He arranged for my mother’s funeral and she was buried quietly in the little village churchyard. Everyone from the house attended and Mr. Sylvester walked beside me to the grave.
Mrs. Couch had pulled all the blinds down when my mother died. She said it indicated death in the house. When we returned after the funeral she served ham sandwiches which was the right thing, she told me, and showed a proper respect for the dead. Then she drew up the blinds which was the right time to do it. She could be relied on to know of these things, she whispered comfortingly to me, because her own mother had had fourteen children and buried eight.
I sat with them in the servants’ hall and Mrs. Couch and Mr. Jeffers vied with each other in telling stories of past funerals they had attended. I could have seen the humor at any other time, but I couldn’t see anything but my bright gay little mother and to think of her silent in her grave was more than I could endure.
I went to my room and I had not been there very long when there was a knock on my door. It was Sylvester Milner.
In his hand he held an envelope.
“Your mother left this for you. She asked me to give it to you on the day she was buried.” His kind eyes smiled gently. “You have reached the lowest depths,” he went on. “Now you will begin to rise. Such tragedies are all part of the business of living but remember this: ‘Adversity strengthens the character.’ There is nothing on Earth that is all evil, nothing that is all good.”
Then he pressed the envelope into my hands.
When he had gone I opened it, and the sight of my mother’s rather untidy sprawling handwriting brought tears to my eyes.
My dearest Janey, (she had written)
I am very ill. I have been for a long time. It’s this cursed illness, the bane of my family. It took my father when he was about my age. I didn’t want you to know, Janey love, because I knew how sad it would make you. The two of us had always been close, hadn’t we, especially since your father died? I hid it from you. Sometimes I’d cough so badly there’d be blood on my pillow and I was afraid you’d see it when you came suddenly to my room. I didn’t want you to guess and I did well, didn’t I? You never knew. I used to worry about you. You were my one concern. But what luck we had. That was your father looking after us. Good kind Mr. Sylvester Milner was like the fairy godfather. First he gave me the post (mind you I was very good at it) and then he let me have you there (not that I’d have taken it if he hadn’t) and there were Mrs. Couch and the rest of them who were like a family to us. So it all came out well. And then he said you were to work for him. I was pleased then but it wasn’t quite what I wanted. I wanted you to be settled. I wanted you to be happy as I’d been with your father and when Joliffe came along and fell in love with you at first sight—and you with him—I was overjoyed. You now have a husband who will care for you as your father cared for me. I came up to see the specialist the day I visited you. He told me I hadn’t got long and that I’d have to go into a hospital. I said to myself then “Lord now lettest Thou thy servant depart in peace.” Because I knew I could go happily. You and Joliffe are so much in love. He’ll be with you now. He’ll take care of you and there was something your father used to say. It was almost as though he knew he’d go first and leave me. It was something in Shakespeare, something like this.
“No longer mourn for me when I am dead”…and it goes on:
“I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot
If thinking of me then should make you woe.”
It would grieve me, Janey love, if I was to look down and see you sad. That’s something I couldn’t bear. So I want you to say this: “She had a good life. She had a husband and a child and they were all the world to her. She’s now going to join one and she’s left the other in the hands of one who loves her.”
Goodbye my precious child. One thing I ask of you: Be happy.
Your Mother.
I folded the letter, put it into the sandalwood box where I kept those things which were precious to me, and then I could no longer contain my grief.
The day after the funeral I received a letter from Joliffe.
My dearest Jane, (he wrote)
My uncle has written to tell me of your mother’s death. I long to be with you to comfort you. My uncle has more or less threatened me if I come to see you. He means I think that he will cut me out of his will. As if that would keep me away! He says that you need time to recover from these two tragic blows and that the best way is in your work with him.