Godfrey Came Out of his wife’s room with a rapid, agitated step, and his tones sounded through the house, hushed and urgent. Voices answered him and footsteps followed, and the house in a moment quivered with suspense and foreboding.
The young people, waiting for prayers in the dining-room, looked at each other. Even Matthew, who was reading in an easy chair, raised his eyes.
“Whatever is it?” said Jermyn.
“Father is coming into the hall,” said Gregory.
Griselda opened the door and intercepted her father.
“There, there, my dear child,” he said in a hasty, colourless tone, without coming to a pause. “Go back to the dining-room and keep your brothers there. Shut the door and stay in there together. Do that for your father.”
“Whatever does it mean?” said Jermyn.
“Perhaps one of the servants is ill,” said Matthew, turning a page.
“It is something more than that,” said Gregory. “Is it Mother?”
“She is always better when she sleeps late,” said Matthew.
“Hark!” said Griselda. “Father is sending a message.”
Jermyn went to the door and opened it, in a single, silent movement.
“Ask him to come actually this instant! Say that I fear the very worst. I hardly know what words I speak. Tell him that I shall be deeply grateful.” Their father’s voice had a tone they had never heard.
“It is Mother!” said Gregory, and ran into the hall.
“Gregory, my boy, go back at once,” said Godfrey, coming forward with his hand upraised and a tone of command and warning. “Gregory, I adjure you to return to the dining-room. Griselda, get him to obey me. Your father asks it of you, Gregory. I forbid you to go a step farther.”
Gregory was hastening up the stairs, with Jermyn and Griselda following. Matthew came slowly after them, his book in his hand, and paused to speak to his father.
“It is nothing to do with Mother, is it?”
“It is your mother, my boy,” said Godfrey with a groan in his voice, standing with his limbs trembling.
Matthew went on, and Godfrey remained by himself, sunk too far in his own feelings for further effort.
A boy’s cry came from the landing above, and the father clenched his hands.
“Mother is dead! She is lying in her bed, dead! Mother is dead, Griselda, Father!”
Godfrey stood still and slowly lifted his head.
Jermyn’s voice joined his brother’s, and there was a sound of Griselda weeping. Godfrey turned and walked up the stairs, in lifeless instinct to do what was before him.
He stood with his children at his wife’s side, while Gregory and Griselda wept, and Jermyn and Matthew kept their eyes on the bed, where Harriet lay as if in sleep.
“My dear children, it is on us now. It has come this time. We are alone now. This time we are really alone.”
“How did it happen!” said Jermyn. “Was she ill in her sleep?”
“She must have been,” said Matthew. “It seems that it must have been her heart. But I didn’t know there was anything wrong with it.”
“It would have been an easy death, wouldn’t it?” said Gregory.
“Yes, quite unconscious,” said Matthew.
“Yes, it was an easy way to go. She has left us easily,” said Godfrey. “May we all go in the same way, all of us here.”
“She didn’t suffer at all?” said Griselda, with a wild look at the bed.
“No, no, my darling. No,” said Godfrey. “Look at her peaceful face.”
Griselda threw herself into her father’s arms, and he caressed her as if unconsciously.
“We can’t all stay here for ever,” said Matthew.
“Dufferin will be here very soon,” said Jermyn.
“Yes, yes, Dufferin will be here. Then we shall know,” said Godfrey, as if this gave a touch of hope.
“We had better go down to breakfast,” said Matthew.
“I don’t know about that, my boy.”
“We shall do no good by starving,” said Matthew.
“No, that is true,” said Godfrey, and turned and led the way from the room. “If we could, how willingly we would do it!”
“To save Mother,” said Gregory, with an unnatural note of mirth.
“You know the truth, Buttermere?” said Jermyn.
“Yes, sir. You will have to keep up your strength,” said Buttermere, as though the approach to the table needed some justification.
“We have a great deal before us,” said Godfrey. “You will share our sorrow in a measure, Buttermere.”
Buttermere gave his master a rapid glance, seeming new to the idea that he shared the family fortunes.
“We dare not face what is before us.”
“You will have to accommodate yourselves again, Sir Godfrey.”
“It passes me how it could have happened,” said Matthew.
“‘In the midst of life we are in death,’” said his father.
“But we are not,” said Matthew. “That is not true. There must be some cause.”
“Well, we shall know in a few minutes,” said Jermyn.
“Could she have done what she tried to do before?” said Griselda.
“Oh, no, no, my dear,” said Godfrey, and was silent.
Jermyn and Gregory looked at Matthew.
“Of course it crossed my mind,” said Matthew. “How could it not?”
“But how could she have come by what was needed?” said Gregory.
“We don’t know that she did come by it. There may be some other explanation. It is idle to speculate,” said Matthew.
“She hasn’t been near Dufferin’s house since she came home,” said Jermyn.
“She was there yesterday,” said Matthew. “Dufferin told me himself. She waited for him in his own room, and had a talk with him afterwards. You remember she came home late from her drive. She didn’t say a word of anything of the kind. But she was alone in his room for an hour.”
“Would anything of that sort be about? Wouldn’t it be put away?” said Gregory.
“Oh yes, I daresay it would; no doubt it would,” said Matthew. “Dufferin might have such things in his room, but under lock and key. I daresay she did not get it; of course she did not. There wasn’t any there that I know of. But this makes one think of any solution, and it is hard to see another. But there must be one. There is Dufferin’s bell.”
Godfrey rose and went into the hall, signing to his children to remain. He and Dufferin exchanged a word, and their steps were heard on the stairs.
“Well, I am not going to be kept here,” said Matthew. “I have as much right there as either of them. I will come and tell you as soon as there is anything to be told.”
“We somehow feel there is still hope,” said Jermyn.
“We are still before the verdict,” said Gregory.
“Nothing can make any difference,” said Griselda.
“No, but Mother may not have felt as wretched as that,” said Gregory.
“She couldn’t have. She would have shown it. She is in her way a transparent person,” said Jermyn, revealing his unchanged image of his mother.
Gregory went into the hall and looked upstairs. Godfrey and Matthew were standing on the landing, silent, and Harriet’s door was closed. Presently Matthew came to them.
“Yes, Griselda was right,” he said. “Dufferin thinks that is what it was. He is all but sure. It will be found out for certain later. She must have got it when she went to see him. She evidently knew his room better than he thought. She waited there for some time. We shall never know if she went with that purpose, or if the thought came to her while she was there.”
“But how did she feel before she did it? What made her do it?” said Griselda.
“She could not have been herself,” said Matthew’. “Her searching for it points to that. It was not like her in a natural mood. That sort of secretive skill is sometimes symptomatic.”
“It would be simply necessary. Open blundering would never work,” said Jermyn.
“Oh well, whatever it is,” said Matthew in a weary tone. He turned to the window, and his sister took his arm. He did not repulse her, but stood as if sunk in his thoughts.
Godfrey and Dufferin came on to the silence.
“I must go back to see if there are any of certain tablets gone,” said Dufferin. “Don’t be more troubled than you must. She suffered nothing; it was the same as dying in her sleep. Matthew can come with me, and be a witness about the amount that is missing. It is better than doing nothing here, though the rest of you must do your best with it. I am afraid it is clear how it was, though the bottle with the tablets will be a proof. In some manner or another she must have known my ways. The cupboard was locked, and the keys were in a drawer across the room. But after all it was possible enough for a reasoning and observing person. The thing that will be said, that she was temporarily insane, ought often to be the opposite.”
“Will it all have to come out?” said Jermyn.
“Yes, it will; we can’t help that,” said Dufferin. “It is all but out now. But it will do no harm to anyone. It won’t be different from other things of its kind. It isn’t anything to dwell upon. You have none of you done anything wrong. Keep that in mind, and have an eye on your sister. Matthew and I will be back when we can. You must remain in the house, and answer any questions with the simple truth. The next few days will soon pass.”
“Can’t anything be done to keep it secret?” asked Griselda.
“No, my darling. I asked that,” said her father. “It seems it has to be faced. We have that before us. It is a cruel thing that your mother cannot even pass from us in peace. I for one shall never feel ashamed of anything she has done. I shall feel to her simply as my beloved and loving wife, and my children’s devoted mother.”
“She didn’t seem so unlike herself yesterday,” said Griselda.
“I suppose she saw her life suddenly before her again, and felt she could not face it,” said Gregory.
“She must have felt that, my boy,” said Godfrey miserably. “But I didn’t guess it. I didn’t know what my wife went through on the last day she lived, the last of our thousands together. She didn’t tell me, though she always knew of anything that I suffered. She didn’t tell even Gregory. She went through it by herself.”
“Matthew looks very ill,” said Gregory. “I did not know people showed signs of shock so suddenly. From his eyes he might have known the truth all night. He is very like Mother.”
“Ah, he is very like her, I fear,” said his father. “I fear it for his own sake, because of what he may suffer. For myself I feel I have her left to me in one of her children. It is only in them that I can have her now.”
Matthew returned very soon. Dufferin had seen his need to relax, and undertaken himself what had to be done. The young man entered with a lifeless step, and answered questions in an empty tone.
“Yes, there was a tablet missing out of a bottle with three. The things on the shelf were a little out of place. The keys were not returned to quite the same position. It is clear enough.”
He sat down and put his hands on his knees, leaning forward over them.
“My dear boy!” cried Godfrey, hastening towards him. “It has been too much for you, having it all piled on you like this. You have had to face the most. You are your mother’s son. Your extra knowledge does not arm you against that. You shall get it off your mind, if you have to burden mine in doing it. Ah, what is it, Buttermere? Matthew, here is a better doctor that I can be to you!”
Matthew had raised his eyes with the look of an animal afraid, but the next moment sprang to his feet. Camilla rushed past him, and flung herself on Godfrey’s breast.
“Oh, dear Sir Godfrey, it is too impossible to bear! I loved her better than I ever loved anyone. I wanted so to belong to her; I was counting the days. I admired her more than any human being in the world. I wish she had known; I never had a chance to tell her. And Matthew with your eyes like hers! I couldn’t love you for anything better than that. I will give you the love I was keeping for her. She would have liked you to have it. No, she wouldn’t, the poor, anxious one! Well, I will be the woman she would have wished. Sir Godfrey, I will be the wife for Matthew his mother would have chosen.”
“I have no fears on that score, Camilla. My wife would not have had them either, if she had had time to know you. And now I am going to put Matthew into your care. He needs it as much as he will ever need it.”
“My poor dear boy, I will tend you as if I were already your wife, as if I had never been anyone else’s. Your room is upstairs on the second floor. You see I display a wife’s knowledge. We will go up together hand in hand. That is her room, isn’t it? Let us stop just one minute. She is lying in there. May I just go in and look at her? I must see her once again. I saw her so much too seldom while she was alive. I never made the most of her. She looks wonderful, Matthew, young and innocent, and with such a peace on her dear, powerful face. I wish I were her kind of woman. I wish I could try to be.”
Camilla broke off, for Matthew was leaning against the door, cowering away from the bed.
“What is it, dearest? There is nothing to be afraid of? Of course it is your mother, and even for a doctor that is different. But it is only the shell, the beautiful casket where the spirit has flown. They won’t have a postmortem, will they? I couldn’t bear for her to be spoiled. Don’t let them have it, if you can help it. You want to go upstairs? We have left the door ajar. It must not be seen like that. I will go back and shut it. There is no need for quite such haste. Oh, close it gently, Matthew. Poor lamb, you are not yourself. You are bound to be restless until the next few days are over. I shall be so glad for you when they are, though for myself I can’t wish her to be put away out of sight. Will your father get over this, do you think?”
“Yes, after the few days,” said Matthew.
“Talk like yourself, my darling. Don’t be bitter. You may feel it the most, but other people are suffering.”
“You need not pity them. It is only I who need your pity.”
“What about Gregory?”
“Pity him least of all. Thinking about Mother will always be pleasant for him, going over his life with her from the first moment to the last.”
“And for you, when you are equal to it.”
“Don’t talk to me about my life with her from the first moment to the last, the last!” cried Matthew, sitting on his bed and raising his hands to his head.
“You are very wrought up, Matthew. I shan’t like to leave you alone. The news was sent to Lady Hardisty as well as to us. Do you suppose she will be coming to you? I should go with an easier mind.”
“She won’t do for me instead of you,” said Matthew.
“For all that I hope she will come. It is no kindness to you for me to stay. I always do sick people more harm than good; they suffer more and not less because of me. I couldn’t bear to do you harm just now. I should always look back on it.”
“You can’t bear to do anything for me just now. I shall always look back on it too,” said Matthew.
It was later in the day when Rachel came. She looked worn and altered, but her voice was her own.
“Godfrey, I am so ashamed of not coming at once. I know that people with deep feelings go about just as usual, only with an older look and a smile that is different. But an older look would not do for me; perhaps it would not be possible. And I was so startled by Harriet’s meeting with success, when it is not in mortals to command it, and they may do more, deserve it. Of course she became immortal by doing what she did, and she did deserve success the second time. She couldn’t do more than try twice. And she may have been in an imperious mood when she commanded success.”
“Ah, Rachel, I am really widowed now. My children are really orphans.”
“And I am really without a woman friend, and it is an established disgrace to be without friends of your own sex. You have the dignity of sorrow, not its disgrace.”
“Indeed no,” said Godfrey. “Indeed we have no disgrace! If anyone uses that word to me in connection with my wife, I shall rise up and confute him. But, Rachel, why did she not tell me? All those days we were together. And we were on our old footing. Believe me, we were. And she did that without a word. Why did she want to leave me?”
“I don’t know, Godfrey; you say she didn’t tell you. And it wouldn’t have been kind of her to tell any of us that. I think she behaved wonderfully. We must idealise her, as people always do their dead. We need not have remorse for not doing it while she was alive, because she could hardly have done it to us, as you suggest. I hope the people at the inquest will do it. I have noticed they do when they can.”
“Ah, we have all that before us,” said Godfrey. “It can’t last for ever; that is one thing. It will all pass as in a dream now.”