“But how can they know? There would have to be some signs.”
“Well, we know what true instincts children and animals have. You must have heard about it. It is observant to couple them together.”
“They have in the books,” said Ninian. “But have they outside them? I should hardly have thought anything about children was sound. They seem so aloof and egoistic.”
“More than we can be?” said Egbert.
“You mean you found me such things? You can feel I went through a crisis. And you can hope it did not go deep.”
“I hope indeed it did not, Father,” said Egbert, gravely.
“We should be thinking of you, Mother,” said Ninian. “We forget you have not our strength.”
“Yes, the time has come to remember. And it will soon be over. You should not let it pass. I may be better than is thought.”
“So may many of us,” said Hugo. “Some of us feel we are.”
“Do we?” said Lavinia. “I should hardly have said so. We alone know our hidden selves.”
“They may be good as well as bad.”
“I did not mean the good ones. I don’t think they are hidden. People are said to be ashamed of their better qualities. But they seem to face the exposure. Or how do we know they are there? And that there is anything to be ashamed of?”
“You talk as if you were fifty,” said Ninian, and broke off at the reminders in his words.
“I can return to my real self, Father. I am glad not to have to act another. I think I may say so once.”
“It is well that someone is glad of what has happened.”
“That is not what Lavinia said, Father,” said Egbert.
“Mother, you must be tired,” said Ninian. “I have never seen you so pale.”
“I hurried up the staircase to the schoolroom. It is a thing I must not do again. I must forget them both. And one will be glad to be forgotten.”
“You must forget the first. You must have the room off the hall. The other you will not forget.”
“I am eighty-seven. I married late. I am an old mother for my sons. People say I do not look my age. That shows they realise the age I am. And if I did not look it, I should have a duller face than I have. I watch it in the glass as often as I did in my youth. Where there are fewer marks of time, time must have held less. And I am willing for it to hold more. I would rather be alive then dead. When I die, people will say it is the best thing for me. It is because they know it is the worst. They want to avoid the feeling of pity. As though they were the people most concerned!”
“Well, it is very dreadful to feel pity,” said Hugo.
“And I don’t believe in a future life, or want to. I should not like any form of it I know. I don’t want to be a spirit or to return to the earth as someone else. I could never like anyone else enough for that.”
“And we are irritated by other people,” said Lavinia. “Suppose we were irritated by the people we were! As we never are, it seems to disprove the theory.”
“I don’t know I shan’t hear your talk, when I am dead. An after life might also have that drawback. There is little good in being out of things and knowing it.”
“You would be supposed to be in so many more,” said Ninian.
“But only in a comfortless, disembodied way,” said Lavinia. “Think how we conceive of ghosts, when we accept them. I hardly like to think of it as applying to Grandma.”
“I think chains and headlessness are incurred by those who fall short in life,” said Selina, not shrinking from this length herself. “Or were the victims of those who did.”
“It is odd that believers visualise spirits in that way. When you think how they should imagine them.”
“It shows it is impossible to believe,” said Egbert.
“Or rare to have reason,” said Ninian.
“You allow the children to believe, Grandma,” said Lavinia.
“They need to accept an All-seeing Eye. Or rather we need them to. No ordinary eye could embrace their purposes. We may as well depute what we can.”
“Even to an imaginary overseer,” said Ninian. “And in fairness to Miss Starkie.”
“Is not retribution too far away to count?” said Hugo.
“No doubt,” said Selina. “But the idea of being watched is discouraging. I found it so.”
“You are thinking of the two little ones,” said Ninian.
“It may also be true of Agnes, but I think less.”
“I should not have thought she would be your favourite. Though I have seen she is. The others are more your type.”
“That may be the reason. I like ordinary children. And of course I can’t think I was that. And looking back, I don’t much like myself.”
“People generally pity themselves, when they look back.”
“And I daresay you are among them. But I don’t want to hear about it. It is too late to remedy the matter. And I am not as concerned for your early days as for my last ones. Childhood is not the only time that calls for pity.”
“You are a heroic figure, Mother, and naturally proud of it.”
“Things we are proud of are seldom an advantage to us,” said Lavinia. “Unless we ought not to be proud of them. And then they may be a great one.”
“Agnes and Hengist and Leah!” said Selina, deepening her voice. “What are you doing in the hall? Is it your schoolroom?”
“It is for the moment, Mrs. Middleton,” said Miss Starkie from the doorway. “I was calling their attention to the panelling. It is of an unusual design.”
“Why do you not open the door and come in?” said Selina, her voice hardly veiling suggestion of social shortcoming.
Miss Starkie remained where she was, and looked behind her, as though her concern was here.
“Come in and speak to your grandmother,” she said, admitting a faint sigh into her tone.
“Do you want us, Grandma?” said Agnes.
“Should I call you, if I did not? I asked what you were doing in the hall.”
“You know, now she has told you,” said Hengist.
Miss Starkie smiled at Ninian, but at no one else.
“Your patience should abash them, Miss Starkie. It would serve them right, if it failed.”
“Ah, but how much would fail with it, Mr. Middleton! How much effort would be wasted! I shall win in the end. Never fear.”
“I admit to some doubt,” said Hugo.
“Ah, I do not, Mr. Hugo. Wild horses would not drag the admission from me.”
“Wild horses never have much success,” said Lavinia. “Their history is a record of failure. And we do suggest a good deal for them.”
CHAPTER V
“Can you hear me, Mother?” said Ninian.
“Yes, of course. I am not dead.”
“We hope you are not going to die.”
“That might go without saying.”
“You know it does,” said Hugo.
“It did not,” said Selina, wearily.
“Do you want to say anything, Mother?”
“No, I don’t want a deathbed scene. When it is acted, it means nothing. And why should I consider my last moments? The others have done more for me.”
“And it is so terrible of them to be the last,” murmured Hugo.
“All of them count to us,” said Ninian. “We need not tell you how much.”
“We need not call up memories. I cannot carry them with me.”
“You will leave them with us,” said Hugo.
“Well, I have been as good to you as you have to me. And better to the son who has left me.”
“We have nothing to regret,” said Ninian.
“He will find enough when I cannot know about it. And it will do nothing for either of us.”
“The word need not exist between you and me.”
“If I die, you will find some reason for it. But it will pass.”