“We should like to come and see you, Amy,” said one. “It would be a change.”
“Would it? I don’t know what it would be,” said Amy, in an absent tone. “It sounds as if it would be nothing. I shouldn’t have anything to do with it. It would be done for me.”
“You don’t seem to do much for yourself. Do you choose your own clothes?”
“Oh, I don’t care about clothes. I never think about them. I wonder people ever do. I hardly know what they are.”
The girls held their eyes from the examples before them in case they might hardly suggest this unawareness.
“Your grandmother’s clothes are good. She must know what they are.”
“Oh, no doubt she does. For Grannie nothing but the best.”
“Does she think much more of herself than of anyone else?”
“Oh, well, everyone does.”
“I don’t think parents always do.”
“This is a grand-parent,” said Amy, her tone still light, but holding a note of weariness.
“The man whom you call Uncle is your real uncle, isn’t he?” said an older girl, using a mild tone to ease the admission. “He is really your grandmother’s son?”
“Yes, of course he is. What else would he be? He is her ordinary legitimate son. I said he was not because I was ashamed of him. As I am really ashamed of everything.”
Amy had reached the end of her capacity for suffering and was impervious to further cause for it. The girls accepted the feeling of shame as a natural part of life, but glimpsed unusual grounds for it and carried things no further.
“You look tired, Amy,” said Jocasta, as they reached home. “It is standing about with nothing in your hands or your head. You get no good out of vacancy.”
“No, perhaps not, Grannie,” said Amy, accepting the account of her afternoon without surprise.
“How will you feel if the school is given up and you have to go to another?”
“I am not sure, Grannie,” said Amy, seeing no prospect of real change unless all schools met this fate.
“Miss Heriot stands by herself,” said Hamilton. “And not only in a literal sense. She is indeed an unusual figure.”
“Oh, she is not a tragic one,” said Jocasta. “She has a home and a family. And would do better to return to them.”
“They may be where the trouble lies, Mamma. In a sense they could be the seat of it.”
“We will not waste our thought on her. She will not waste hers on us. Nothing is being done for Amy there. And if one of the women has not made an end of the school the two of them will. We will not talk about it. We will not talk about anything. I am worn out and fit for nothing. I must ask for silence.”
She leant back and closed her eyes; Hamilton tiptoed from the room; and Osbert began to murmur under his breath.
“She can’t have quite what she asks. We must hear what Amy has to tell.”
“It is nothing,” said Amy, in the same manner. “Or nothing you would understand.”
“Was it everything?” said Erica, in a tone that denoted understanding.
“Yes it was,” said Amy, in one that accepted it. “I mean it was what Grannie said.”
“Could you voice it?” said Osbert. “Even that would be better shared.”
“She said I was moved by the sight of this dress. And that I never had any money.”
“I hope that was all. It seems to comprise everything.”
“No, it was not. She has asked the girls to tea.”
“Here?” said Erica, on a higher note.
“Here,” said Osbert. “It is the unlikely that happens.”
“There is nowhere else,” said Amy. “It doesn’t seem so very unlikely. And the likely really happens oftener.”
“It is true. There is no escape. It comes under either head.”
“There is something else,” said Amy, with a faint smile. “Uncle Hamilton said he would be here. He talked to the girls himself. But he matters less than Grannie.”
“Well, he would. She is built on a larger scale.”
“Did I or did I not ask for silence?” said Jocasta. “What would this incessant muttering be called? And what are you saying about me?”
“That you are built on a larger scale than Uncle Hamilton,” said Erica.
“Well, I may be. I daresay I am. My sons were not equal to me. There is often an outstanding member in a family. But there is no reason why she should be harried to death. You know what I have asked for, and you know I will have it.”
As the hush fell, Amy leant back and rested her head on her hand, an attitude that caused her grandmother to frown, though it resembled her own and came from similar feelings.
“Amy, try to look as if you were alive. There is no reason for this exhausted pose. You have had a great deal done for you to-day. Your afternoon has been very different from mine. It seems that pleasure does not agree with you. We must see you don’t have too much of it.”
“No, yes, Grannie,” said Amy, finding she concurred in this view, and hoping that hospitality came under the same head.
Chapter VI
“Well, here I am at home!” said Hermia. “Not where you thought to see me. Not where I hoped to be. Mater is not in the offing? I can say an open word? I am not a welcome figure any more than I am a willing one.”
“Why are you at home?” said Madeline, with her eyes and tone grave. “We can hardly be glad of it if you are not.”
“Because a break was needed. Because it had to come. Because other things had come. Miss Murdoch and I are like flint and steel. We can’t come together without breaking into flame. She holds to her place without the power to fill it. She stands in the way of everything. What I could do is not to be done. What I have done is to be undone. I don’t know what the end will be. I begin to feel there must be an end.”
“It may be that tact and patience are needed,” said Madeline, as if such qualities could not be depended on.
“I told myself that, as everyone would. And I found they did nothing, as everyone does. And I found the decline will go on, as nothing is done to check it. A deadlock has been reached, and is not resolved. I am here for the break to achieve it. Though where my presence failed, it is unlikely that my absence will succeed.”
“So you are here again, Hermia,” said Eliza’s voice. “Sooner than I thought to see you. Not that I felt it would be long. So the school is not the whole of your world? This house is still your background, if not your home?”
“It seems it may be both,” said Hermia, in an even tone. “You sound as if you want me to admit it. Does the admission afford you any pleasure? It affords me none.”
“Why, what is the matter? What do you mean? I hope there is nothing wrong.”
“I hope so indeed,” said Sir Robert, as he came to greet his daughter. “It is soon for a threat of this kind. I trust it is one that will pass.”
“The trouble lies deep,” said Hermia. “Madeline knows what it is. She will tell you and save me from doing so, and you from hearing it from me.”
“I know what it is,” said Eliza. “None of us needs to be told. It is what I was afraid of, Hermia. Your temperament has betrayed you. You had great patience here, and it unfitted you for the world outside.”
“That is not where I am. I am in a narrower world than this, one where the temperament you mention, or what you mean, was the one that might have served. No other would have been of any good. I could only show it and hope it would prevail. But nothing would or could have. I see there was no hope.”
“You showed your temperament and hoped it would prevail. The epitome of your life. And put into words by yourself. We need not say any more.”
“How far has the failure gone?” said Sir Robert. “Is it definite and complete?”