This Letter, Posted by Dominic, was read by Matthew at the breakfast table in the morning. He had come down after a sleepless night, and almost leapt at the message in Camilla’s hand. He read it through, and suddenly sat down, as if something had let him down from a height; and looking round the table, seemed to find himself speaking.
“Well, there is an end of it now. It doesn’t matter any more. Anyone may know it. I may as well tell you myself. I am tired of this covering up with silence. And Camilla does not keep things to herself; she says she does not; she means to say it.” He held out the letter, and his voice and gesture suddenly threw back to his childhood. “Mother did not take the tablet on purpose. She did not want to die. You all know that she had stopped wanting it. It was I who wanted her to die, for fear she should prevent my marrying Camilla. Camilla had begun to listen to her, and she would never have stopped listening. It would have been like Gregory. But Camilla will never marry me now. This has made her know she does not want to. I was always afraid of her finding it out. I never meant to tell her the truth, but something forced me to say it. It was not much good my doing any of it, was it? I would rather people knew; it is not the sort of thing I like to carry by myself. I do not care for it somehow, knowing it all alone. I do not like it in the night, when I do not sleep.”
“Matthew, Matthew, what are you saying? You do not know. It is a delusion that you have. You have felt it all too deeply,” cried Godfrey, rising and going to his son. “It is nothing to do with you that your mother died. What are we all coming to, that you should have been brought to this? There, there, my poor child, your father understands.”
“No, you do not understand yet,” said Matthew, disengaging his arm. “You still think I did not do it, that Mother did it herself. But it was I who put the tablet there. I got it from Dufferin’s room. It looked like the sleeping tablets. I shall have to tell you a great many times.”
“Tell us just what you did,” said Jermyn, coming to his brother. “What was it exactly that happened? If you tell me, it will help you to see that you did not do it.”
“I put a poisonous tablet with the ones she had for sleeping,” said Matthew, in a suddenly surly tone. “That is what I did, since you want to know exactly. And I gave it to her with one of the others, when I went to her room that last night. She asked me to put off my marriage, and I knew that would mean it would never happen, that Camilla would escape. That is simple enough, isn’t it? The tablets looked very much the same.”
“My boy, my boy!” said Godfrey.
“Then Mother did not want to die?” said Griselda, who had been sitting with her eyes on Matthew’s face.
“No, she did not. She did not think of it. It was I who thought of it,” said Matthew, falling back into his strange simplicity. “It was an easy thing to do. It worked just as I thought it out.”
“My God!” said Godfrey, putting his hand to his eyes.
“He may have thought it out, or something like it, in his brain,” said Gregory in a deliberate, quiet tone, “and then imagined himself doing it afterwards. These troubles have set our minds running on such things. That is what it must be.”
“Now let us have an end of this,” said Rachel. “Yes, that is what it is, of course. It simply goes without saying. Matthew must come upstairs and rest. This will not go out of his head until he sleeps. Jermyn, send a message to Antony to ask him to come this moment. It would save trouble to keep him in the house until this matter has stopped reverberating. Griselda, don’t sit with your eyes on your brother like that. There is nothing to frighten you in his getting a delusion through sleeplessness and shock and love trouble all at once. Godfrey, come and take his other arm; he is not steady on his feet. You see, this is just an echo of Harriet.”
“I am not going upstairs. I am not going to sleep,” said Matthew, looking at Rachel with calm, obstinate eyes. “I do not sleep nowadays. And it is not worth while to get back into the way of sleeping. I shall not have much more time. I shall be glad to come to grips with it now. Dufferin will believe me, when I explain how I used his keys. He knows I understand what he had, and that Mother did not. And Jermyn believes me too.” He gave a natural, cynical laugh. “I can see he does. He believed me easily. And I do not mind. I am glad it has all come to an end.”
“Buttermere, can’t you go out of the room? Must you keep meandering about, doing nothing?” said Godfrey. “Can’t you learn when you can do something and when you can’t?”
Buttermere vanished with more than his usual noiselessness.
“You are too late, Father. He had heard it all,” said Matthew with another normal laugh. “We may trust Buttermere.”
“Yes, yes, we may,” said Godfrey, keeping his eyes on Matthew’s face, and forcing himself to talk in his usual manner. “Yes, you are right, Matthew. Do you begin to feel more yourself, my boy?”
“I am quite myself, Father.”
Godfrey’s eyes showed fear.
“I will go and tell Buttermere to be ready to let Dufferin in,” said-Gregory, looking at Rachel. Rachel followed him into the hall.
“Gregory, Matthew has a delusion. You see that is what it must be, what of course it is. See that everyone knows it is that. He is like his mother, and may have inherited mental unsoundness from her, and the rush of troubles has been too much for his brain. Antony must be told just that when he comes into the house. Wait here for him, and say those words to him from me.”
Gregory walked up and down the hall, adopting a sauntering step when Buttermere moved into sight. When Dufferin came, he repeated Rachel’s words with his eyes on his face. Dufferin stood for a long moment, meeting the eyes, and hurried into the dining-room.
Godfrey took a step towards him, as if to protest and explain, but drew back and watched the meeting with Matthew with aloof, almost furtive eyes.
“Well, come upstairs with me, Matthew. You are my patient this morning, and will do what you are told. You know better than to waste my time.”
Matthew rose and went with his friend, as if willing for his companionship, and the family stood in silence.
“Well, has Gregory told you?” said Matthew, when they reached his room. “I did it because there was nothing else to be done. She would have parted me from Camilla; it was in her mind. I had got to read her mind. And now I find it is of no good, that it is worse. Camilla has given me up because of it.” His tones hurried and stumbled and his eyes went wild. “You know Camilla was in this room with me that day Mother died, that day we knew she was dead? She sat here on this bed with me. You did not know that?” He pulled himself together and went on with a quiet smile. “I am the victim of my own plot, and I am anxious for the end to come as soon as it can. I want to get in advance of Camilla. She will never keep it to herself. She cannot carry a burden. I begin to see that many people could not. I can’t get the others to believe me, but I think Jermyn does.”
“You took the tablet from my cupboard?” said Dufferin.
“Yes, you must see that I did,” said Matthew, his voice sounding tired. “You see that I must have. You know my mother did not understand what was there. She could not have recognised the tablets if she had found them. I thought it all out. I knew she had been in your room by herself, and what would be said after what she had done before. And you know she had lost her desire for death. You knew it all. I wondered you did not think of it at the time, especially when the point was raised of my being the last person to see her alive.”
“You did, did you?” said Dufferin. “Well, of course it was plain to you. But it didn’t strike anyone as a natural thing for you to do, even though you had your own ends to serve. I thought there must be some other explanation, and accepted the only one. But you are right that I see it now. You thought your mother’s life a reasonable price to pay for your own safe happiness! And you think your father’s and your sister’s suffering a fair exchange for your own peaceful exit, now you have finished with things yourself! For a man of such a mind neither death nor any living death is a useful thing. You will find you have no fancy for death, except for your mother. Your thoughts will go to the way of escape, that come to you through her. You may as well depend on her to the end, since you have learned how to put her to your own use. You have had a delusion. You have over-deep feelings, inherited from her, and a precarious mental balance, also that heritage. And her first attempt on her life had preyed on your mind. And I am not saying that all those things did not do their part. That must help me to do what I can for you; I shall need the help. You must take shelter behind that falsehood, and spend your life in its cover. You have shown you are not the kind to come out.”
“I did not know you were cruel,” said Matthew.
“You have been kind, haven’t you, in putting an end to your mother, when she had some dark years behind her, and the chance of some better ones ahead? Who knew that you were cruel in the way you are? I am not saying you did not suffer from her, but you would never have suffered death. It was your life that was in her mind. People who think of themselves to that extent don’t want their years snatched from them. It was your mother who was to lose her years. You will do no more harm, Matthew. You will fall in with what is best for other people, and its being best for you will not prevent you. You are too like your mother. The tragedy got on your mind, and you fancied yourself the author of the thing that made too deep an impression. That is a possible thing; perhaps you knew that. Now get your head clear about the truth—the truth, Matthew. And I will turn your key and take it with me, and go and explain your case to your family, as I have explained it to you. That suits your own mind very well?”
“I don’t really care,” muttered Matthew.
“You have got away from the desire for justice. People don’t want what they deserve, when they deserve so much. You can lie down and be ill. You are ill for that matter; you are in a very low state; that part needn’t be acting. And the rest must get not to be. It is a great relief to you to be free from your burden. That is so even between ourselves. We shall never say a word of this again, if we live to be old men. Doors have ears. I saw Buttermere’s face. And I see yours too. You have learnt your lesson. You haven’t needed much teaching, and you will never need any more.”
Dufferin locked the door and went downstairs, humming a snatch of song. He entered the dining-room and left the door ajar.
“Ah, the poor boy! We have got it over. He will never have the fancy again. It was as real to him as if it had been the truth. He faced it as truly as if he had it in his memory. And he behaved well.” Dufferin, in his effort to encounter Godfrey’s eyes, found himself echoing his speech.
“He did, Doctor,” said Godfrey, coming forward with extended hand. “I thank you for the words. He is a hero. I thank you for establishing it. We all thank you for lifting this great weight off our minds. For we didn’t know what to think. I confess I didn’t. He might have done it in illness, just as he fancied he had done it in illness, the poor, overstrung lad! He is like his mother. If any one of her children is like her, it is he. And seeming to feel the least all the time! Ah, still waters run deep. Well, Rachel stood by us, and did not let her belief falter. She held up her heart and she held up ours. She knew the truth. She sensed it. Her woman’s instinct led her right. Ah, that is the kind of thing to trust.”
“Then Mother did want to die?” said Griselda.
“Yes, she did want to,” said Dufferin. “We have to look at that. But it was only a moment, and not the moment we imagine. She would have had a sort of exaltation.”
“My poor, heroic, erring wife!” said Godfrey.
“Godfrey, you know you are sure that Harriet hears everything,” said Rachel.
“Is Matthew clear now that he was under a delusion?” said Jermyn.
“Yes, it is all over,” said Dufferin. “I don’t think it can come on him again, but I am going to keep a watch on him to-day. I will take in his meals myself, and have him under my eye. Buttermere is not the person to be about him, or about anyone in a nervous state. Don’t interfere with me. I know what I am doing.”
“We are too grateful, Doctor,” said Godfrey. “But one of us will go upstairs with the meals.”
“No. I said I knew what I was doing. He would rather have me. He will be himself to-morrow, if he gets some sleep.”
“Dear, dear, this sleeplessness! It is a ghastly thing to have in a family. The poor boy gets it from his mother,” said Godfrey. “Now one thing I know, it doesn’t come from me. I have never been sleepless in my life; and since everything has been to pieces about us, I have been a dead man from midnight to morning. Well, Buttermere, we have good news about Mr. Matthew. We can call on you to congratulate us. He has thrown off the sad delusion that was troubling him. It is off his mind, and the world is clear before him. You know his engagement is broken off?”
Buttermere barely inclined his head.
“It was that that was too much, and nearly wrecked his reason. Ah, it nearly threw him on our hands a helpless—threw him helpless on our hands. We are at ease about him now.”
“Yes, Sir Godfrey,” said Buttermere.
“You don’t think it has got about, do you? See that the report doesn’t spread. It would not be fair on Mr. Matthew. We know how easily words set into a form.”
“Not a syllable will pass my lips, Sir Godfrey.”
“Oh well, it is hardly as bad as that. But we don’t want it chattered about all over the place. You see the distinction?”
“I agree there is apt not to be any, Sir Godfrey.”
“Well, keep your mouth tight shut then.”
“That is what my words amounted to, Sir Godfrey.”
“Well, suit your actions to your words.”
“I have expressed the intention of taking the wiser course, Sir Godfrey.”
“What do you mean?” almost shouted Godfrey. “Are you insinuating that there is anything against my son?”
“Insinuation is not in my line or my place, Sir Godfrey.”
“You are right about the last,” said Dufferin. “But talk in any way you like, or in the only way you can, only where we can hear you don’t talk at all. And bring something on a tray for Mr. Matthew. He had no breakfast. Bring it now, and I will take it up myself.”
“I am to be depended upon, sir.”
“Do as you are told,” said Dufferin.
“If you think it wiser, sir,” said Buttermere, hastening his step a little as he left the room.
“Can we go on having him about?” said Griselda.
“Taking him seriously would be giving a wrong impression,” said Jermyn.
“We can hardly expect him not to show his disappointment,” said Rachel. “Think of being baulked of what you would like best in the world, when in sight of it!”
“We shall be ill if we discuss him, and we already have illness in the house,” said Griselda.
Godfrey walked from the room as if he could not bear again to be unduly stirred.
Gregory sauntered up to Griselda with a kind expression.
“It is all over now,” he said.
“Well, what does it matter what happened, when the choice is what it is?” said Jermyn. “It makes little difference which tragedy we have in the family.”
“It makes all the difference,” said Dufferin. “And you know which you have. I have told you. People too simple to set aside the sick words of a sick man must be taught.”
“I saw it for myself. I have proved I am not simple,” said Rachel. “Even Matthew did not imagine he was that, at the worst moment of his delusion. He saw himself behaving in quite a complicated way. He kept his self-respect through everything.”
“We have simply to be ashamed that we have less deep feeling than he has,” said Gregory. “It is too heartless of us not to think we did it.”
“I see how his mind may have begun to work,” said Jermyn.
“No, that is not fair, Jermyn,” said Rachel. “You know quite well that he put the whole thing into your head. Be generous like your father. He makes no claim at all, though no one appreciates it as he does. You have brought the tray, Buttermere. What is your feeling about having put the tablet with the harmless ones? You must not bring forward a definite claim; the family must come first.”
Buttermere looked over the tray in silence.
“Take this key, and carry up the tray, and put it down by Mr. Matthew, and come away as silent as you are now,” said Dufferin.
“Yes, sir,” said Buttermere, leaving the. room with an even tread and the tray motionless.
“You can deal with anybody, Rachel. You have passed the final test. Now all of you go to your several occupations. You must some of you have something you sometimes do. And Griselda would be the better for an hour by herself.”
Griselda turned to Dufferin the moment they were alone.
“It all gets more and more, Antony. It is more than it ought to be, for Mother to have wanted to die, not to have wanted her life any more than that; and for Matthew to think he did it, to have that to suffer as well as his own disappointment. It was always dreadful to see him disappointed. And I can’t bear not knowing if he did it. We shall never know. You know we shall never know. And it is worst of all, yes it is, for Father not to feel things more. That was all she had in her life, poor Mother, all she had, when she was a woman who needed so much! And Ernest will feel he is taking too much on himself in marrying me. He wants a wife who will give him support, not someone crushed and disgraced by a family like mine. And I will not marry a man who does not let me have my brothers. I would have even Matthew, even if he had done it. I have never cared for him as much as the others, but I am his sister now. And Ernest will despise him for having delusions. He thinks he is the only person in the world who must be weak. I can’t be strong enough for him.”
“Be yourself with him, and let him see that he has more than enough. If he doesn’t want you as you are, strong or weak, with or without his kind of strength and weakness, tell him you feel the same to him. More than one of you may be undertaking too much.”
“I know I must seem to have strange feelings about him.”
“He could speak the simple truth about you. You see that he does speak what seems to him to be the truth. I think he does that about more things than most of us. I think he is an honest man, Griselda.”
When Bellamy came in later, he wore a look of simple exaltation. He shook hands with the men, and putting his arm round Griselda, faced them with kindling eyes.
“Haslam, I have come not in a spirit of bitterness or judgment. I have come to identify myself with Griselda’s family, to be Matthew’s brother and your son. I have come to help you to be simply courageous and straightforward in tragic circumstances. For who are we who should judge? Who am I? He is a man and my brother, my brother in more than one sense. Something was too strong. And how know we on what day or in what hour our own temptation may come, and find us not on the watch but sleeping?”
Griselda stood with her head bent, looking up at Bellamy from under her brows.
“Ernest, my boy,” said Godfrey, standing with his hand held out, but not advancing, “we thank you for your generous attitude. We thank you as much as if we needed it. But happily we have not come to that; mercifully you do not find us in that pass. It emerges that Matthew’s love and grief for his mother transcended what others felt, and left him shattered. So that this sad delusion took hold of him and laid him low. But his will has risen victorious and truth has triumphed. With our friend the doctor’s help, he is established as sinning not at all, but greatly suffering.”
“Is that proved?” said Bellamy, speaking before he thought.
“Yes, it is certain,” said Dufferin. “A case of transferring something that has made a deep impression, to himself, as people unjustly accused of a crime have been known to fancy themselves the authors of it.”
“Poor boy, poor boy!” said Bellamy.
“Yes, yes, you say the words,” said Godfrey.
“I feel I stand reproved,” said Bellamy. “I feel I should have known Griselda’s brother. But the tidings came to me as established by his own confession.”
“Tidings! Established!” said Godfrey. “His own confession! The poor child only spoke of it this morning. I hope the true report will get about as fast. We will ask you to do your best in that matter for us, Ernest. And of course you couldn’t know what to make of it all. We were baffled ourselves. The confession came, as you say, from his own lips. He thought it was a confession, poor, suffering boy! He is terribly like his mother, terribly for him, appealingly for us. My wife leaves one child who is her equal in feeling.”
“The rest of us will soon have borne enough,” said Jermyn.
“Ah, Haslam, it is a complex heritage for us. We shall need our qualities to bear our pride, and live under the sword of Damocles. You need have no fear for me. I shall not flinch. It is Griselda, wild and sorrowing and burdened, whom I love, as I shall never love another woman.”
“If you think of me in that way, you do already love another woman. That is not the woman I am. It is too much for you, the prospect of our marriage. I wondered if it would be. I knew you well enough to wonder. And it is too much for me. I could not support you under the strain of my family life. We should both of us have more than we could bear.”
“Griselda, I have already almost had that,” said Bellamy, holding out his hands. “You see me as I am, an overwrought and tired man. I need the strength that you can give.”
“I am never one for thinking a woman ought to give more than a man,” said Griselda in a breathless tone. “I don’t see that difference between women and men. I don’t want to see it between my husband and myself. I don’t feel I am such a strong woman. My mother knew I was not. I don’t want to give out so much; I should get weary with so much giving. I don’t care for the men who are weaker than women, and I am no good to the kind that are. I think you are right in your judgment of yourself. There had better be an end of everything between us. Mother was right. There is an end.”
Griselda broke down, and Jermyn and Dufferin followed her from the room. Bellamy made a despairing gesture and looked at Godfrey.
“Well, I can’t help it, my boy,” said Godfrey.
“Well, can I?” said Bellamy. “Can I help it, Lady Hardisty?”
“Well, Griselda implied that you couldn’t,” said Rachel. “And she seemed to have thought about you. But I should say there couldn’t be a better person than you to marry. I have often thought about you two, and always said that.”
“Well, I will go home,” said Bellamy, as if he expected to be gainsaid. “I will return to my lonely fireside. No, I will give up talking like Spong. I will become a man who need not have his fireside lonely. I will learn Griselda’s lesson; I find no lesson beneath me; and I am not slow to learn. I will depend on you all to remain my friends.”
“Well, the reformation came too late,” said Rachel. “Only a moment, but I think Antony has taken advantage of it. I can go home to my lonely fireside too, and settle down with Percy and his memories. I have some memories of my own now. Well, Harriet always wanted Griselda to marry Antony.”
“Well, I declare, I believe she did,” said Godfrey. “She never said so, and I never thought of it. But I believe she did.”
“Why, of course she did!” said Gregory.
“Must you be going, Rachel?” said Godfrey. “I hardly have the energy left to thank you. I have come to the end of my tether.”
“That is wonderful of you,” said Rachel. “Harriet’s husband and eldest son do her the greatest credit. Jermyn shall see me into the hall; it is unassuming of him not to mind being able to. I can’t say enough for Harriet’s family in their different ways.”
“I wanted to have a word with you,” said Jermyn, “and not about anything you expect. Not about Griselda’s fluctuations, or even about Matthew’s rise in general esteem. About something that will explain my mistimed consciousness of self. Here is my book of poems that has just come out. I wish my mother had seen it. I did not dare to let Mellicent read them before they were published, but the majesty of print has begotten confidence. I want you to ask her to be ready to tell me her impression. I know I sound egotistic, but life has to go on.”
“It does seem too unchecked of life,” said Rachel, “but it is quite the opposite of you to wish your mother had seen the poems. Do you really want Mellicent to tell you her impression? Wouldn’t it be better for her to tell you yours?”
“Very much better. But I hope she will do both.”
“It is a thing we have tried to break her of,” said Rachel. “But if you must encourage her!”
“Yes, I encourage her to the last point. Thank you so much,” said Jermyn, walking away, as his father came rapidly towards Rachel, unmistakably struck by a thought.
“Rachel, is there anything between Jermyn and Mellicent?” he said in a sibilant whisper.
“Nothing between them. Something in Jermyn,” said Rachel. “Percy and I shall never prove to people that Mellicent wants to be a spinster. It has a too impossible sound. We shall have to face the dishonour of having a daughter unsought. Mellicent has inherited nothing from Percy’s early self.”