Agatha Did Not follow her custom of coming to the door to welcome Gregory, but waited at her fireside while he approached.
“This is not the first time I have received you in this trouble. I know you understand that I will do anything that is in me to make it easier for you. Happily you are young enough for compensation.”
“I wish I could get at Mother’s feelings,” said Gregory, taking his place at her feet, and speaking as if he knew he might open his mind. “She tried to tell me the first time, and I suppose this was something like it, but she herself didn’t seem at all the same. I feel that if I could realise how she felt, I should be more at rest.”
“Isn’t that a little too like your mother?” said Agatha, stroking his hair.
“That is the first thing we shall aim at now,” said Gregory.
“In some things, yes, indeed,” said Agatha, “but there are others in which she would be the last person to wish you to follow her.”
“The one thing at the end she didn’t recommend the first time, but she seems to have thought better even of that. She was quite herself the last day and night, really more natural than when she first came home.” A shadow of condemnation crossed Agatha’s face. “On the whole she believed she had no child on her own plane. She must have known she had not.”
“Don’t you think,” said Agatha softly, “that you are at a time when we are apt to take pronounced, even exaggerated views of what we have lost? I can remember doing it myself, in those of my sorrows that could bear the light thrown upon them.”
“I feel as if I were taking the right view for the first time. I don’t know though that that is fair to myself; I think I always took it. But I wonder if Mother knew that I did.”
“I think that whatever we feel honestly always comes through. I am sure we need not be in any doubt about that. What we do not feel honestly, what we only imagine or wish we felt, will separate itself in the end; and we shall be glad to feel it sorted out, and to lay it aside, knowing that we want only sincerity between ourselves and our dear one. I think I can tell you that for certain.”
“Did you find that when your husband died?” said Gregory.
“Oh, that is a different loss,” said Agatha, drawing herself back. “That is a loss we do not compare to any but itself, the loss unique, isolated, supreme. I did not mean that when I spoke about my sorrows; I thought I gave a hint of that. I hope you will never have to face it. That is generally the woman’s lot.”
“No one knows the difference it makes, when someone has died by her own will.”
“Ah, that is what you have to face alone. That is where your experience has its own isolation,” said Agatha, seeming to grant the advantage here. “There is the darkness, the hint of tragedy, the shadow of feeling that we must condemn. But in a way, does it not soften the trouble”—she bent down and just looked into his face— “that she left you by her own choice? That she had no will to live to be thwarted? Would not that have been a harder thing? You are spared that.”
“That is the worst of it,” said Gregory, with tears under his words. “She had nothing; she felt she had nothing. Her own courage was all she had. It gave way, and it meant the end.”
“That is how I should wish my son to feel about me,” said Agatha, as though struck by this realisation, “if I could be in the same place. We will imagine it for a moment for your sake. Of course he would know I could not choose that way out. It is not quite what we all call courage. But if I were not as I am, and could do the same, I should wish him to feel as you do.”
“Would you dare to do it?” said Gregory.
“It is not a question of daring to do it,” said Agatha, lifting her head. “It is a question rather of daring not to do it. Ah, I remember when my husband died. It did take some daring.”
“Are you speaking honestly?” said Gregory.
“What did you say?” said Agatha.
“I said, ‘Are you speaking honestly?’”
“It is of no good to ask a question if you are not sure about that. The answer would mean nothing.”
“I never think those answers do mean anything. You are right that it was a useless question. I know we all give the answers. I should not have said the things that lead to them. Of course my trouble should stay where it is.”
“Surely not, when you are talking to an old friend. If I have made you feel that, I have failed you. That is how we must put it.”
“No, you have been too forbearing. The person does not exist who would not fail me at the moment. I make too much demand. Rachel will be killed amongst us all.”
“Lady Hardisty is staying with you?” said Agatha.
“Yes, for a few days. Sir Percy is utterly kind to us.”
“She is a very charming woman,” said Agatha.
“Who is?” said Geraldine, entering the room with her sister. “Of the many women in the neighbourhood who is your choice?”
“Charm is rarer than women,” said Kate.
“That is the point,” said Geraldine.
“Lady Hardisty,” said Agatha in an easy, open tone.
“Yes, she is charming. I should say brilliant is more her word,” said Geraldine.
“Fortunate creature, to offer such a choice of words!” said Kate. “She undoubtedly does offer it. I was going to say clever.”
“She is certainly an effective talker,” said Agatha, moving with a soft rustle to the tea-table. “It gives one quite a thrill to see her come in and sight her victim. We are certainly indebted to her for a good deal of enlivening though perhaps we ought not always to enjoy it as we do.”
“I did not know she made victims,” said Geraldine.
“Didn’t you? Oh, yes,” said Agatha.
“Another gift,” said Kate. “But I had not observed it. Her humour strikes me as so kind.”
“True humour is always kind,” said Agatha. “And Lady Hardisty is not without the knowledge of it. By no means. But she takes a pleasure sometimes in getting her shafts home. Oh yes, she does. Haven’t you been struck by it? Oh yes.”
“I believe I have noticed her getting them in at you, Agatha,” said Geraldine.
“Well, it is no wonder if I have perceived it then,” said Agatha, laughing and looking round, as she stooped to offer something to Kate. “I don’t think it is anything to be surprised at, if it has not escaped me.”
“You poor thing!” said Geraldine. “Ought we to have come to your rescue? I don’t remember more than half noticing it.”
“I don’t remember noticing it at all,” said Agatha, laughing again, and motioning Gregory to keep his seat. “But it is no wonder, if it was so, that something came home. It would have been the last thing she was out for, to fail of that. I am glad I saved her effort from being quite wasted.”
“Even though your perceptions were rather dim,” said Geraldine.
“Yes, well, it is a thing I am hardly prepared for,” said Agatha, standing up and speaking with deliberate frankness. “It is a thing I should never do myself, and that does not predispose me to think it likely that anyone else should do it. But if I have afforded any satisfaction, I am delighted.”
“Rather a sardonic kind of delight,” said Geraldine.
“No,” said Agatha consideringly. “No, I do not think so. I should honestly have no objection to being the target for a little innocent fun, or the excuse for it, if you like. I think there is nothing we should rightly object to in that position.”
“Then I should wrongly object,” said Geraldine. “Nobody would dare to use me for such purposes. It is no wonder Lady Hardisty settles on you. Perhaps she would not do it if she knew you.”
“I am sure she would intend nothing that was really ill-natured or malicious,” said Agatha, glancing at Gregory. “I think I found her shafts rather flattering than otherwise, though she did not intend them to be so. Missiles often hit the mark better when they are not aimed.”
“I thought you had not noticed them!” said Geraldine.
“I must be going. Thank you very much for putting up with me. I said I would be home early,” said Gregory.
“Now what I think you want, is a succession of long nights,” said Agatha. “You take my advice and see that you get them. If I were coming with you I should not leave it in your hands.”
“Poor boy, he was very silent,” said Kate. “I am sure I don’t wonder.”
“I wonder he came,” said Geraldine. “I should have felt too self-conscious in my sensitive youth.”
“Oh, he had plenty to say when he first came in, before he had an audience,” said Agatha. “That might have made him self-conscious; I daresay it did. He came to get it all off his mind, I think.”
“What did he say?” said Geraldine.
“Oh, we had the whole gambit to run through,” said Agatha, standing with a pitying, tolerant smile. “I was not spared any of it. The poor boy felt he had to tell someone, I suppose. Well, I am only too glad that I could be of any relief to him.”
“You were alone in being up to that,” said Kate.
“I think there is not much in it,” said Agatha. “I think it was only that he wanted just the life-stamp, that drew out his boyish confidences, without making him feel there was anything unnatural in his pouring them forth. That was all it was, I believe.”
“You can hardly regard it as not enough,” said Kate.
“Well, whatever it is, I am glad to feel he won’t have to go home and face the rarefied atmosphere of Lady Hardisty, without the memory of something a little more human to leaven it with,” said Agatha, suddenly seeming to thrust out her words. “I can just imagine him working himself up to greet her. And I think it is so hard on him at this point of his young experience.”
Gregory met Rachel without making any effort on her behalf, and she began to speak herself.
“Gregory, Ernest and Griselda are in the library, and I can hear Griselda crying. And it is not the sort of crying that goes with to-day. She left that off when she heard he was coming. What is the good of his stopping one kind to start another? Can he be saying anything out of his own head about your mother?”
“What makes you think that? Have you been listening at the door?”
“I could not go quite up to the door. Buttermere might have come along.”
“I should have been inclined to go in and interrupt them.”
“But they would have known I had been listening, and I should not have heard the rest. I thought Ernest was wearing his own religious look when he came in.”
Bellamy had arrived and greeted his betrothed, unaware of his betrayal of himself.
“We are to have a time to ourselves, we two! That is perfect of everyone who has planned it. People always are perfect in times of stress, and they must have been especially so to you. This is what my heart was crying out for. I felt I could bear no one but you to-day. I am a little drained out after the service. I put the whole of myself into it. Did anyone tell you about it? I had almost thought you would be there, as I was to give the address. I had half hoped it would comfort you. I thought of you in every word I wrote.”
“I shall like to read it some time,” Griselda said.
“You could not get an impression from my few rough notes. I jot down a word, and then get into the pulpit, and out it comes with a rush. I just want a hieroglyphic to start me off.”
“Ernest, what made Mother go away alone and do it, go away alone? What did she feel when she did it, all by herself? All by herself, poor Mother, poor Mother, by herself!”
“Oh, come, come now,” said Bellamy, “you must think of me, my Grisel. I cannot bear too much. You have not taken the strongest man for a husband: you must have a care for the man you have chosen. I have lived these last days in thought of you. I have thrown the whole of myself into my words of your mother, weighed every syllable I uttered, to give her only respect and compassion at this time which is a trial of our own strength. You know very little has gone well with me in my life; and now into this vista of hope and light there is come this shadow of darkness, the hint of hanging of the head; and it is getting to be much. You must remember I am a man and weak, and you are a woman and strong.”
“Your share in this is nothing to mine,” said Griselda, lifting her eyes. “It is my family who has had a tragedy, not yours. You make me feel how apart our lives are. Of course all lives must be. There is nothing to hang the head over in my mother’s being ill and helpless, unless for people who are used to hanging the head.”
“Ah, who is to be used to it, and who is not? It is not I who would say. Even her helplessness will be thrown at us. Family taints and what not will be bandied about our heads. But I am not to be the first to swirl the whispers about you. My part will be to stand on guard.”
“It has all come to me beforehand through you,” said Griselda, breathing deeply.
“Did not I tell you what my part would be? My whimperings were to throw my true self up in relief. Tell me you guessed their purpose. I am such a play-actor that I like the light and shade. Come, you are learning to know me. You must learn. Think how I have learned to know you.”
Griselda stood with her head down, and Rachel and Gregory found it the moment to enter the room.
“Lady Hardisty, Griselda has been trying to quarrel with me, and making such a gallant effort that she has almost succeeded. She cannot get used to my posing ways, and cannot teach me not to bring them out before her. But you will let me stay to dinner, and be one of the family, and her heart will be softened when she sees me making a personal sacrifice, and pronouncing grace as if it were a difficult and important duty.”
“Yes, yes, my boy, stay and be with us on this first evening of our new life,” said Godfrey, crossing the room with a progressively widening step. “It still seems it can’t be much of a life to us; but we may pull up and get going as we did before, as my dear wife would wish. Now, do you know, here is a thing to be told! If there is any one of her children who feels this, it is Matthew. He is simply laid on the ground by it, he of all of them! I hadn’t an inkling he cared for his mother so much. It shows how blind we can be. Well, now the thing is, he is not coming down to dinner. He is to remain alone in his room. My heart rose and sank at the same time. I would give a good deal if his mother could have realised how he felt for her. There doesn’t seem any point in it now. Of course there is more point in it than ever. She looks down on us and knows more about us than we know ourselves, and for any mortal frailty makes more excuse than we should dare to make.”
“That will be a great advantage for you,” said Rachel. “It is really very nice of Harriet. So many people in her place seem so different, from what people say, and expect too much. They are sometimes quite a strain. Making more excuse than we dare to make is superhuman, because all has been done that can be done. Of course Harriet is that now.”
“Ah, yes, we shall appreciate our wife and mother as never before,” said Godfrey.