‘You should use the past tense,’ said Kate.
‘So I should; so I must by degrees. It comes hard to my tongue to use the word, “was”, of the master.’
‘We know he would not return, if he could.’
‘We may know it, Kate, with our heads. In my heart I shall always feel that he would revisit the old haunts, if he could.’
‘Was he good enough to go where it is better than here?’ said Simon.
‘It is not for you to inquire after those above you,’ said Ainger.
‘And now so much above,’ said Mrs Frost.
‘Mrs Frost, I should not have instanced it as a case for pleasantry. I wonder at its striking you in that light.’
‘We cannot have only heaviness,’ said Kate.
‘There is nothing else for me,’ said Ainger. ‘For me it is one of the passages. I go alone through it, and would not include others. I have had the gain and accept the loss. We pay the price.’
‘Of every happiness,’ said Kate. ‘Perhaps still waters are best.’
‘The master was not very old,’ said Madge.
‘Fifty-two summers,’ said Ainger. ‘It was his weakness to pass for less, or we will say his whim. But for me the veil was lifted.’
‘To me he looked his age,’ said Kate.
‘His face carried the ravages of his experience. And I do not share his reluctance. Forty is my age, and as forty I stand before you. It is the right age for a man. But this will take me forward. Middle age is in sight.’
‘I am sixty-three and not troubled by it,’ said Halliday.
‘Seven years from the span,’ said Kate.
‘And not troubled by that!’ said Halliday.
‘That is what I mean,’ said Mrs Frost. ‘And it is what the master meant.’
‘Mrs Frost, had you no feeling for the master?’ said Ainger.
‘I had as much as he had for me.’
‘He estimated your skill in your line, and indeed gave voice to it. He was not conversant with your life in its other aspects.’
‘He did not know it had any.’
‘Now, Mrs Frost, how could he?’
‘He could not, as it had none.’
‘Now, Mrs Frost, you cannot expect us to believe that.’
‘I daresay the master would have believed it, if he had thought about me.’
‘Now how often did you think about him, apart from matters in your sphere? And of those he spoke in commendation. And I lost no time in conveying it to you.’
‘We have to be thankful for small mercies,’ said Madge.
‘I am not,’ said Mrs Frost. ‘They are too small.’
‘Mrs Frost preserves her note,’ said Kate.
‘I did not suspect her of principles of equality,’ said Ainger.
‘There is the order of, things,’ said Kate.
‘I used to wish to advance,’ said Ainger. ‘And it may raise its head. For the moment I find it enough to have served.’
‘I am glad your sorrow is to be short-lived,’ said Mrs Frost.
‘Mrs Frost, you fail to do Mr Ainger justice,’ said Kate.
‘Ah, never mind, Kate,’ said Ainger. ‘I do not stake any claims. No, Simon, you may keep your seat. The bell is my prerogative today. I feel it is my heritage from the master. It comes to me as a bequest.’
‘It is his legacy to you,’ said Kate.
‘I would rather have the ordinary kind,’ said Mrs Frost.
‘Well, Mrs Frost, if you want to know, you have it,’ said Ainger, pausing and speaking almost fiercely. ‘The master has remembered both you and me in his will. He reposed his trust in me on the point. And the others benefit to a proportionate extent, priority receiving its due.’
‘But Mrs Frost spoke without ulterior thought,’ said Kate.
‘So now you know what to think of him,’ said Ainger.
‘So I do,’ said Mrs Frost, ‘and I am thinking it. But I did not know before.’
‘I am glad I did not speak against him,’ said Kate. ‘Not that it should exert an influence.’
‘I never will again,’ said Mrs Frost. ‘I find it is exerting one.’
‘I have been here nearly fifty years, boy and man,’ said Halliday. ‘If things are to be taken into account.’
‘So that is your instinctive response,’ said Ainger. ‘Surely the amount is negligible.’
‘I hope not,’ said Mrs Frost.
‘Mrs Frost, I meant it was secondary, as you know.’
‘It is the thought,’ said Kate.
‘But the thought must have an object,’ said Halliday.
‘I am in a position to state figures,’ said Ainger. ‘But I refrain from doing so. It is not the occasion. I was wrong to broach the topic.’
‘You did it to uphold the master,’ said Kate. ‘It must emerge in the end,’ said Halliday. ‘It is not your secret.’
‘That will seem strange to me, when it has been so for so long.’
‘You must sometimes have felt the impulse to divulge it,’ said Kate.
‘You are mistaken, Kate. It was dependent on the master’s passing. I held my thoughts apart.’
‘If he had lived the normal time, I should have gone before him,’ said Halliday. ‘There would have been no reward for a lifetime.’
‘Anyone would think it was the matter of the moment,’ said Ainger. ‘I regret that it escaped me.’
‘I suppose it was meant to interest us.’
‘It was meant for that, Halliday. The master thought of our advantage at the time when he would have nothing. There is something that grips the heart.’
‘People have to make their wills. They are not heroes for that.’
‘I think they are,’ said Mrs Frost. ‘I made my will, and I was a hero.’
‘You can’t take anything with you.’
‘I said I was a hero.’
‘The master had choice,’ said Ainger. ‘He could have left everything to the family without further thought.’
‘Perhaps they are heroes,’ said Mrs Frost. ‘I hope they are.’
‘Oh, it is not on that scale,’ said Halliday.
‘There is the bell again, Mr Ainger,’ said Kate, in surprise at Ainger’s delay.
‘It is strange,’ said the latter, standing straight and still, ‘how I miss something in the master’s ring, something firm and masculine that spoke from him to me- ‘He turned and vanished as the bell rang again.
‘Something firm and feminine spoke to him,’ said Mrs Frost.
‘That is what we have now,’ said Halliday. ‘And we shall have more of it.’
‘Aren’t ladies as good as men?’ said Simon.
‘They tend to be subject to themselves,’ said Kate.
‘And that means other people are subject to them,’ said Halliday.
‘If ever anyone carried a grief, it is Mr Ainger,’ said Kate. ‘The way he does not protrude it tells its tale. His presence should act as a restraint.’
‘Ah, we are a thought worked up,’ said Halliday.
‘The note of hysteria,’ said Kate. ‘We must not judge each other.’
‘Mr Ainger judged me,’ said Mrs Frost.
‘I can imagine his bearing as he reaches the drawing-room,’ said Kate. ‘It would stand as an example.’
Ainger was doing his best to make it do so.
‘Yes, ma’am? Yes, sir?’ he said, without raising his eyes.
‘There are messages to be taken,’ said Mr Clare.
‘I have seen that the word is passed, sir.’
‘And directions to be given. Your mistress must be spared.’
‘I was not proposing to approach her, sir. Matters are on foot.’
‘And the children should be told,’ said Flavia. ‘They must not hear from anyone but me.’
‘Then it should be soon, ma’am. Ill news travels apace.’
‘Perhaps you will bring them to us.’
‘If I may suggest it, ma’am, would not their own quarters be the right background?’