“This Edith Hallam has nothing to do with you, Miss Hallam?” said Hetta, glancing over the paper at breakfast and catching sight of an advertisement. “This Edith Hallam who has won this great prize for a book?”
“No, nothing at all, I am sorry to say. I wish she were my very self.”
“She is no relation of yours?” said John. “Simply a namesake? It is just a coincidence?”
“Simply that. She is not the remotest cousin.”
“What is the prize?” said Sabine.
“Two thousand pounds,” said Edith. “At least, I think that is the sum. I remember noticing my namesake’s success. I am not sure about it.”
“You have letters from a publisher yourself sometimes,” said Sabine. “I have noticed them when I have sorted the letters.”
“I am sure you have, Grandma,” said Victor, “and everything else about every other letter which has come under your eye.”
“It is not the same publisher, I expect,” said Hetta. “Mater is making something out of nothing.”
“And if it were,” said Edith, “he would not be concerned with the coincidence. He would hope for no profit from it.”
“Who is your publisher, Miss Hallam?” said John.
“I have not such a connection. Corresponding with one does not mean he is mine. You may have been too fortunate to realise that.”
“Anything you cannot help seeing, Grandma, you should at once forget,” said Chilton.
“She would not forget much on that basis,” said Clare.
“Don’t be silly,” said Sabine. “I have not surprised any dark secret of Miss Hallam’s.”
“Indeed you have,” said Edith. “People’s first dealings with publishers are always secret and very dark. Especially when they come to nothing.”
“Ah, it is a rough road, Miss Hallam,” said John. “If I have climbed a little higher on it, I can only know it better.”
“It seems to be strewn with roses sometimes,” said Victor.
“If only Grandma’s sight would fail a little more!” murmured Chilton. “Just enough to prevent her from sorting the post.”
“You are wishing her to become blind,” said France. “We hesitate to put a curse on her.”
“What are you muttering about?” said Sabine. “Are you afraid of being heard?”
“They seem to be ashamed of everything they say,” said Hetta.
“What are you going to put on to me?”
“A double curse is the only thing,” said France. “Grandma must be deaf as well as blind.”
“I am neither deaf nor blind,” said Sabine. “Both my sight and my hearing are good for my age.”
“True,” said Victor.
“I never know why you mention your age, Mrs. Ponsonby,” said Alfred. “Its only result is a greater experience than other people’s.”
“That is not true,” said Chilton in the same low tone. “The results are piling up. Grandma does not need any curse put upon her. The curse of years is enough.”
“She must become gradually less of a problem,” said Victor.
“She will have fits of being herself,” said France. “This is the dangerous stage.”
“Her fits of being herself seem prolonged and frequent,” said Clare.
Sabine rose to her feet.
“I will not stay at the table: I will not be left out of things in my own house. I will not have talk going on all round me, and be invited to take no part. You may consider the reason why I am leaving my own board.”
She paused at the door, waiting for it to be opened. Alfred was the first to reach it, and having ushered her out, picked up her stick and followed her.
“If Grandma has her stick carried for her, it is not much good to her,” said Victor.
“Its being carried for her is of general good,” said France.
“Well, I hope you are all satisfied with the beginning of your day,” said Hetta, looking at them coldly.
“We are dumbfounded,” said Chilton. “To think there are three other meals at which we have to meet Grandma!”
“Who will presumably be again at the table,” said Victor. “May words be put into our mouths.”
“We had better put some into Muriel’s,” said France, “as the office is not performed for her. We must take matters into our own hands.”
“Muriel, let me hear you observe: ‘Grandma, you and I may now engage in a little chat.’”
Muriel broke into mirth.
“Don’t be too foolish,” said Hetta. “It is no good to assume you are ill-used, and make jokes on that basis, when you have simply been ill-behaved and dealt with accordingly. It does not go without saying that you are always right.”
“I am bound to say I agree with your aunt,” said John, looking up. “I can’t have two opinions about the way to treat my mother.”
Sabine took advantage during the day of the mood to which she had reduced her grandchildren. The hours passed without further mishap. When the second post came in the afternoon, it was taken, as usual, to the drawing-room. She looked through the letters, laid them in a pile, and rang for some tea.
“I am tired, Gertrude,” she said in a quavering, aged tone. “It is the sudden cold weather. It seems to sap my strength.”
“You ought always to have your own tea earlier, ma’am. It is late when Mr. Marcon has finished with the young gentlemen.”
“I am afraid I spend too much of my life in adapting myself to others.”
The maid was silent over this extension of the position.
Sabine waited until she was alone, poured out some tea, poured part of it away, took a letter from the pile and laid it on the jug. When she read the letter, her eyes lighted with a sort of leap, as if she were pouncing on an expected prey.
“Dear Miss Hallam,
“Thank you for your acknowledgement of the cheque for £1,000, which we sent to Robert Seaton Esq., 54, Melton Square, London, according to your directions. We are retaining the balance of £1,000, pending your further pleasure. We are paying great attention to the advertisement of your book. With our renewed congratulations—”
There followed the name of the publishers whose advertisement Hetta had seen, and whose printed name Sabine had seen on Edith’s envelopes. The name of the man was that on the cheque which had come to John. Sabine sat on, fingering the letter, sinking into the sudden lethargy of her age. When Hetta entered, she gave a start and controlled it in the same movement, and sat looking at the letter almost dreamily, as if her mood had not been broken.
“Tea at this time, Mater? Are you not well?”
“I was cold and tired,” said Sabine, laying her hand on the open jug and looking in to gauge the depth of the water.
Something in the action struck her daughter, and she glanced at the letter and the open envelope.
Sabine took up the envelope, held it deliberately open to avoid the damp glue, and reinserted the letter.
“I am going to forward this: it was something I had to read. There was no need to waste a stamp and a fresh envelope.”
Hetta knew nothing of her mother’s correspondence, or did not know how much she knew, and some feeling rooted in childhood, held her from further speech.
“Ring for another cup, my dear, and we will have some tea together.” Sabine’s tone of propitiation puzzled Hetta, as it could not be referred to the present scene, for which she would tender no apology. “You and I must remember how to be companions.”
Sabine continued in her cordial mood, joined her family at tea in an equal spirit, deferred to the men, petted Muriel, and drew Alfred and Edith into the talk on the same terms as her son and daughter.
After tea she went away by herself, and, coming on her son without appearance of contrivance, appointed an hour for a talk without laying any stress on it, so that he should not speak of it to his sister. Then she went about some household affair with a brisk, light air, sometimes almost singing to herself.
“Your notion that Grandma was failing had not much in it, Chilton,” said Clare. “She has definitely renewed her youth.”
“It may be the last spasm of energy before the system runs down,” said Victor.
“Victor, you speak beyond your age, as you intended,” said Chilton.
“And he also does his best for the idea,” said France. “I wonder he is not struck dead or turned to salt or stone.”
“Is it worse to say things about Grandma than about other people?” said Muriel to Edith.
“Much worse, except perhaps about your Aunt Hetta.”
Muriel accepted this account as likely and reasonable.
“I am glad you did not give Father the whole of your money, France,” said Clare. “There has been even more economy since he had it. We must beware of sending the second thousand pounds after the first, if it is to have no result.”
“I suppose debts are being paid. And anyhow he had the first excitement. It has not done nothing.”
“Father’s brief pleasure was bought high,” said Chilton. “Would you not say so, Miss Hallam?”
“It does not follow that it is not worth the price.”
“I thought it was going simply to come out at breakfast.”
“It is a good thing I am not one of those people who cannot tell a lie.”
“You did not tell any lies,” said Muriel. “Everything you said was true.”
“If we talk about it, it is bound to come out,” said Clare. “We had better keep our rule that it is not to be mentioned.”
“I think it had better come out soon,” said Chilton and Edith at the same moment.
“No, no, not yet,” said France. “I am not prepared. I could not face it yet.”
“You are in trouble, France,” said Chilton. “You have done Father a kindness and deserve his gratitude, and that is bad. And he will have to relinquish his idea of the grateful reader, and substitute one of a successful daughter, and that is worse. And it caused him to rejoice in public, and that is worst of all. But the sooner it comes to light, the less will be the result.”
“No, I don’t agree,” said France. “When it falls back into the past, it will loom less large.”
“She may be right,” said Edith, “and it is for her to decide. And your father’s difficulties will be real and not of his own making.”
“He is not to be made a butt because he has been deceived,” said France. “Why give a wrong impression, if you are not going to maintain it? I decide that the thing shall be kept a secret for ever. And if I want to give him the other thousand pounds, I shall do it.”
“What words are these that escape the door of your lips?” said Chilton.
“Bring forth men-children only!” said his brother.
“She had better bring forth brain-children. It will be better for the family,” said Clare.
“Can people decide what kind of children they bring forth—have?” said Muriel. “I thought they couldn’t.”
“You are the one who is right,” said Edith.
Muriel looked gratified, but hardly surprised that such information was not general.
Sabine went to the library to keep her appointment with her son. She waited without sign of impatience, sitting in the especial chair which was hers in every room, and moving her lips as if rehearsing something to herself. When he came, she motioned him to a seat, and, leaning towards him, spoke with deliberate certainty, bringing one hand down on another to point her words. She allowed herself neither to become argumentative nor to be deflected from her course; and when she had finished heard his side with an air of weighing what he said, and resumed with simple confidence that she would gain her end.
“How did you come on the letter?” said John at last.
“I opened it by accident, when I was sorting the post, and read it before I realised. It was typed and very clear.”
“I suppose you should have kept what you read, to yourself.”
“You suppose, do you? I suppose we should sell what we have and give to the poor; I suppose we should forgive unto seventy times seven; I suppose I should not be telling you this; I suppose you should not be listening; I suppose we should return the thousand pounds and say we could not take it. Oh, suppose, suppose!”
Sabine had reached the end of her tether and John was silent.
His mother was not for long.
“You said that another sum like this would tide you over and give you a chance. You said it because you meant it, because it was true. We can go on living from hand to mouth, but we cannot do more. We have to put our hands to our mouths. Edith would cost no more as your wife, than she does now. And there is money coming to her later. And think what her feeling for you must be, to bring her to this!”
Her son showed that the stroke had gone home.
“What will Hetta say?”
“What she must say. And it will hurt neither herself nor anyone else. Hard words break no bones, and anyhow Hetta’s don’t.” Sabine gave an almost tender laugh, but John was silent, knowing that his sister’s words broke more than her mother knew.
“I am not putting her to one side,” said Sabine, mistaking his thoughts. “Why should I think of her as second to you? Hetta is the first person in all our hearts. But it is better for you both that things should be changed. She has had too much trouble from other people’s lives. They are not her own; and her making them so is to her credit, not to her advantage.”
“She will feel she is being put to one side, and you know it.”
“Of course I know it. I should not be blind to it, should I? Who but me is her mother? And should I look forward to it? But it cannot last. Edith will settle into any place: she will not want to manage the house. She only wants to be your wife.”
“You are sure she does want it?”
“My dear boy, I have told you the truth. I have watched her, as one woman watches another.” Sabine felt no scruple in putting the case to her mind, as she had no idea she was not on certain ground. “She gives all the signs, though she hides them in a way that does her credit. No one has noticed them but me.”
John was too used to his mother’s supremacy to wonder why this was the case. He smiled to himself before he knew it. This conception of a women’s feelings was soothing to a man, who had long given his family more than it gave. He rose and walked about the room, with his head bent and an aspect of rather conscious thought.
Sabine put on her glasses and began to read, almost openly implying that her end was won.
“I am not to tell her of the letter, of course?”
“Of course not. You are to tell her you want her for herself. She will tell you the rest in her own good time.”
John was still in the moods of exaltation and reaction, which had resulted from his gift, and was ready to embrace any hazard which postponed his daily routine.
Edith was not unwelcome in the place he had given his unknown friend. He put her intelligence high, and her proved admiration of his work put it higher. It was a further help to know that the end he sought was assured. He took an early chance of finding her alone.
“Am I welcome in your private domain? May I ask to share what is yours? We are safe from the young ones, are we? I have never wanted them less. You will understand when you know my purpose.”
Edith already knew. John’s manner and his mother’s had told her, and she was glad the climax had come. The response she was ready to make, would have amazed her a year ago. Her sympathy with John in the constraint and isolation of his life and the threat of his future, his rather wistful friendship, her own susceptible age had resulted in a feeling which she had believed was foreign to herself. Sabine’s watch for signs of that feeling had been to a point repaid.
“Are we to enter into a conspiracy?” she said.
“I hope we are. It must be almost that in this house. But you know the house. You know its three generations. Could you bring yourself to belong to it?”
“I already belong to it, don’t I? Your mother is always telling me I do.”
“My dear old mother! It is not the least thing you have done, to win her heart. It is not given to many. I am less honour to win, as a lesser person; but I have given myself to just as few. Do you see into my mind?”
“No. But you tell me what is in it, so I suppose I know.”
“And what have you to say?”
“Ought you not to say a little more?”
“I ought and I will,” said John. “I want you to marry me and be a mother to my children. Do you see your way to it?”
“I will try to do it, but I don’t really see the way. What about your sister?”
“I am not afraid of her in any sense.”
“I think you must be. Anyhow I am. And one sense is enough.”
“She is not her brother’s keeper.”
“That is a foolish thing to say. Of course she is. What is she, if she is not that?”
“Let us not think of her, except to be grateful to her for the past.”
“That is a contradiction in terms. If gratitude for the past has no effect on the present, in what way are you grateful?”
“She will always have her place in my heart and in my house.”
“Of course she will. So what place shall I have? I mean in the house: places in the heart are easier.”
“Do you want to undertake its management?”
“No, not at all: I have no idea how it is done. But I must be somewhere. If I am your wife, I can’t be got rid of. Your sister has always wanted to get rid of me, and for a governess it was usual and reasonable. But now it will have to stop, and I hardly think it will. Did you have the same problem with your first wife?”
“I saw less of my sister as a younger man. But when my wife died, she did her utmost to fill her place. I hope I shall never forget it.”
“It is the remembering of it that we are arranging. She will manage the house, but I shall have to be a member of it. It can’t be avoided.”
“It will not be avoided,” said John. “And you must learn to call her Hetta.”
“And will that make me a member? Yes, I suppose it will. Of course it will, if you think. Well, then, that is an end.”
“You will want to give your time to your writing. We must not take you from that.”
“Oh, I write very little. Really hardly at all. It is not worth considering.”
“We shall alter that. Indeed we shall consider it. My mother was reminding me of it to-day.”
“Shall we pass from your sister to your mother? Does either know the truth?”
“My mother knows it, knows my feelings. She is waiting to hear if I have met with success.”
“And your sister does not know?”
“My mother may be preparing her. Neither can know my fate.”
“Your mother must guess it, if she is preparing your sister. It would not occur to her that the governess could refuse her son. And she is quite right. In all the books she accepts him. Does your mother mind?”
“She has lost her heart to you, as you know. She is waiting to welcome you as her daughter.”
“You see she has guessed. But she already has a daughter. And I am sure she has not forgotten it.”
“Come, come, my sister will be simply glad to welcome you. She wants nothing but what is good for me.”
“She is a very odd person then, and I don’t see her as so odd. She must want what is good for herself, like anyone else.”
“She has made a sacrifice of herself. I shall be glad to see her freed.”
“If you felt like that, you could have freed her. I really think you should have.”
“Well, better late than never.”
“That is an untrue saying. Things are often no good when they are late.”
“My poor sister! But I feel I can trust her. Let us go and put her to the test.”
“Tests are meant to find out weak places, and we all have them. Let us put it off. Your mother can think you are not winning me too easily. She had better not believe I jumped at you, and jumping at anyone would only take a moment. Shall I go on teaching Muriel?”
“No. She will have another governess. You will have the choosing of her.”
“I am the last person to do it. It seems impossible to people to find anyone to fill their own place. And it was your mother who chose me, and I must not interfere with other people’s duties. People resent being deprived of their duties more than anything else. They must feel that work is the way to happiness.”
“I shall always be grateful to my mother.”
“I was much the best of the people who applied. She had only to read my letter to see that: I think she said so.”
“Would you call it a reasonably nice place for a governess?”
“No, I should not: it is quite impossible. Only I could have filled it.”
“We are not thinking of filling your place. Only Miss Bunyan’s.”
“Well, only Miss Bunyan could fill that. I was talking of my place. For Miss Bunyan I hardly like to say what it was. I will certainly leave the duty to your mother.”
“We must see that the post is better.”
“Well, no one would recommend a post, who knew it as only the person who has filled it, can know it. People never let servants who have left, know the new ones. The new governess and I really should not meet, but I don’t see how it can be managed. I will behave as if I knew nothing. And now we will go and break it to your mother and sister. They say that things get worse, the longer you put them off, and I find it is getting worse.”
They went to the drawing-room, where Sabine and Hetta were together. There was no hint of disturbance about them. The mother had meant to prepare the daughter, but had not dared.
“Well, Mater, here I am, a triumphant man and feeling unworthy of my triumph in the approved way! The sense of unworth common to the accepted does not interfere with their spirits. That seems to be allowed.”
“My son, I am glad. My dear, I am so indeed,” said Sabine, rising to embrace Edith, and keeping her back to her daughter until the truth should be revealed. “We could not have parted with you, and it is good that any risk of it is past.”
Hetta had sat with her eyes on the group and her brows impatiently contracting.
“What is it? What is it all? Can’t you make it clear? What is all this acting?”
“It is what you see: I have two of you instead of one,” said her brother, taking her hand and drawing her to Edith.
“What do you mean? What is it?” said Hetta in a sharper tone.
“Hetta, I am to be even less alone than I have been. You, who have been enough for me, will rejoice that I am to have more than enough. You, who have saved me, will rejoice that I am doubly safe.”
“What do you mean?” said Hetta, looking into his face.
“I mean that Edith and I are to take each other for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, according to the pessimistic outlook of the marriage service. May we escape what is there laid out, and may you have a sister, who will be less trouble to you than your brother has been.”
“You are not thinking of doing anything foolish? You are not really thinking of marrying?”
“I have put it plainly, Hetta,” said John, with a gravity which brought home the truth to his sister, and angered her with its acceptance of the different outcome to him and herself.
“But why do you want to marry?” she said in a perplexed, impatient tone. “You have nothing in common. You have no great feeling for each other. What is in your minds?”
“Let us say we are the victims of the attraction of opposites.”
“Well, mind you don’t do anything foolish and regret it too late,” said Hetta, turning away and taking up something from the table.
“Hetta, we were relying on your sympathy and understanding.”
“Well, what do you want me to do about it?” said his sister, jotting something down, and then turning and continuing in a manner which showed that she spoke from a sudden thought. “You must remember you had my sympathy and understanding in an event so different, that it does throw a strange light on this one.”
“Hetta, that is the last thing which should be said. I should not have believed the words could pass your lips.”
“Why should they not pass them? Why should I force back my natural words? Is that what you are doing? You can’t think the thought will not occur to everyone. But is it a thing to be so much ashamed of? Your trouble was genuine at the time.”
“We must observe the customs of the civilised.”
“Marrying more than one wife never does seem to me so very civilised. But why should not people have their own ideas? I suppose I should marry more than one husband, if I wanted to. Perhaps I am over civilised.”
Sabine, who had listened with a look of simple pain, sank into a chair, as if feeling how long she had stood.
“We should grudge you to even one husband,” said John, forcing his tone. “We need you in your present place. Edith does not want to take over the house.”
“Take over the house?” said Hetta, drawing her brows together. “Well, of course she does not. How could she? She would not be able to. People can’t suddenly do another person’s work. I suppose she is not going to write your books?”
“She is not going to do either your work or mine. She is going to do her own.”
“Well, teaching is useful and I should think difficult work. I would not claim to be equal to it. We are all made for different things.”
“I meant her own writing work. She will not go on teaching Muriel.”
“Won’t she?” said Hetta, raising her eyes. “Why, who will do it, then?”
“Now it is my work to manage that,” said Sabine. “My work need not be disturbed, any more than anyone else’s. Hetta, you are going to congratulate them, my darling.”
The endearment, rare in Sabine, forced Hetta’s response.
“Oh, congratulate them! Oh, yes, one does, doesn’t one? I give them all the congratulations possible, but it does seem so odd. But I do everything expected of me.”
“We are giving you a sister to look after,” said John; “but we know you are equal to that.”
“I have looked after Miss Hallam for some time. That won’t make any difference.”
“You must learn to call her Edith.”
“Must I? Well, that is easily done. One can easily say a name.”
“Hetta, you do not feel I am not dealing fairly with you?”
“Dealing fairly with me! You are not dealing with me at all, are you? It is Miss Hallam you are dealing with—Edith, I mean. There, I have got it out! That is progress, isn’t it?”
“Now Edith must do the same by you,” said Sabine.
Her soothing tone caused her daughter to turn and walk from the room, and to leave the door open in apparent absence of mind, but, as her mother knew, in an actual instinct to force the group apart.
Hetta went to her room and stood with clasped hands and her eyes fixed, and began to walk up and down without relaxing either. Then almost without transition she went downstairs, impelled by a vague feeling that something might have changed. She found the three as she had left them, and a great wave of resentment swept over her at their indifferent blindness.
“Well, when do you want me to arrange the wedding?” she said, tapping her foot and looking out of the window.
“I suppose that is my family’s duty,” said Edith.
“You have no family, have you?”
John gave an open frown.
“I have an uncle who will act as my family, who is my whole family, in fact.”
“Is that the uncle whose wife—is your uncle married?” said Sabine.
“He is a widower. He is my uncle by marriage. He married my aunt.”
“Is that the aunt—I think you told me you had lost an aunt.”
“Yes, she died some years ago. I missed her very much.”
“Then you will just be married, and come home and go on as usual?” said Hetta.
“Edith’s uncle may have his ideas,” said John. “It is his affair. But we hope, whatever the marriage will be, that you will come to it, Hetta.”
This coupling himself with Edith and placing her apart wrought his sister to a further pitch.
“You won’t find the uncle difficult to get over,” she said with amused confidence. “It can’t be that sort of uncle, who has let Edith earn her living, and never wanted her in his home; not the old-fashioned kind who would think her one of the family. He will let you have any kind of marriage you like,”
“Then we will be married at once by licence, and have no one there but ourselves,” said John in another tone. “That will be the best way to get our path clear.”
“Well, do you know, I thought that would be best from the first. I do think it best for a second marriage. The feeling of having lived a thing before, is trying when it is a delusion; but when it is accounted for by actual fact”—Hetta gave a laugh—“it must indeed be difficult. And we shall not have to get new clothes for Mater”—She hurried on in face of her brother’s silence—“or new clothes for me, or new clothes for Edith and the girls; and that will be a great saving of expense at a time when it seems to me that our expenses will be increasing. There is the new governess, if nothing else. Edith should not cost more than she does now, must not cost more, in fact.”
Sabine rose with the open purpose of ending the scene.
“Let us go and tell the children the news.”
“No, I can’t have that,” said Edith, glad to get on to open ground. “I could not face it. Let me go away to-morrow and have nothing said, and come back when it is over. It is to be quite soon: John does not want to wait.”
“I should think not,” said Sabine. “It would be odd if he did. Well, as you will, my dear. There is nothing against it.”
“You will remember not to speak of it, Hetta?” said Edith.
“Me? I shall not think of it,” said Hetta, standing with her finger tips touching a table, and turning in a vague manner. “What did you call me? Hetta? Yes, so you did.”
“Of course she did: you are to be sisters,” said Sabine, putting her hand on Edith’s shoulder. “What else should she call you? You were clever in calling her Edith.”
“Was I? I suppose I was,” said Hetta, almost dreamily. “Yes, I see I gave her permission. And I can go on doing it: there is nothing in saying a name. It is easier than Miss Hallam.”
“It is also better. Miss Hallam is already strange. You will go to your uncle, my dear?”
“Yes, I will go to-morrow, if I may. Then I shall be out of danger.”
“Your uncle is in London, isn’t he? Have we heard his name?”
“It is Seaton,” said Edith, driven off her guard, and afraid the next moment that the name would recall the cheque.
It recalled it to Sabine, who was equal to giving no sign, and to her son, who saw it as proof of his mother’s case. Hetta was maintaining her dreamy pose and did not hear.
Edith left the next morning, ostensibly on a sudden visit, John later in the day on a similar pretext; but it was not until the evening that Sabine chose to break the news.
“Muriel may come to dinner to-night. I have something to say to you all.”
“What have we been doing?” said Victor. “It can’t be much, if Muriel is involved. I hope Grandma is not going to offend one of these little ones.”
“I hope it is not the other way round,” said Clare.
“You have been doing nothing,” said Sabine. “It is other people who have been doing this time. You are to hear what it is, and to forget about yourselves.”
“Our very innocence is turned against us.”
“Don’t raise their hopes, Mater,” said Hetta, looking up from some needlework, which she had had in her hands all day, though she seldom sewed. “They will be expecting some great excitement, instead of something which is to leave their lives just as they are.”
“We certainly expect nothing which will not do that,” said Clare.
“I think I can guess,” said Alfred.
“Now I daresay you can,” said Sabine, in the tone which she began to reserve for Alfred. “I am not suggesting that you need things explained like my grandchildren. But you will be quiet, if you please, and leave me to tell my dull witted ones in my own way.”
“I would not miss that,” said Alfred.
“We would none of us miss it, indeed,” said France.
“I am a dull witted one: I have no idea,” said Chilton.
“Mater, you are making a mistake,” said Hetta, almost laughing.
“Must we really wait until dinner?” said Victor. “Will not Grandma put us out of our misery?”
“You will wait, and, what is more, you will wait in silence,” said Sabine, who was feeling the strain of what was behind.
“Muriel is the only one who can obey without effort,” said France.
“I said you would wait in silence, and you will do so.”
They did so, and did not wait beyond the hour.
“Now are you all listening?” said Sabine at the table. “Muriel, you are not woolgathering? I am not going to tell the news, and then tell it again because of some gaping inattentiveness. You are giving me your mind?”
“Yes, Grandma.”
“I am on thorns,” said Victor.
“My breath comes short and fast,” said Clare.
“There, Mater, I knew you were doing that,” said Hetta, with serious expostulation. “You are lifting their hopes to the skies, and then down they will come with a crash. Well, I can’t help it: I have done my best.”
“Now, you know that your father and Miss Hallam have gone away,” said Sabine, not turning her eyes from the young faces. “They went away separately, and they will come back together, and you will have to learn to think of them together. Now do you know what I mean?”
“No,” said Muriel.
“So I was right,” said Alfred.
“We know what you should mean,” said Chilton; “but do you mean it?”
“Put it into words, Mater,” said Hetta, laughing. “There is nothing obscene about it, or nothing supposed to be obscene. Marriage is the commonest thing in the world, after birth or death. Why should we make a mystery of it, as if it were indecent or illegal? It is not the last anyhow, whatever some people would say about a second marriage’s being the first. There is no reason why it should not be put simply.”
“I chose to put it as I did. Now what do you say to it? Is it a pleasant surprise?”
“It is a surprise indeed,” said Clare. “We had no inkling. They have not even been much together.”
“You don’t know yet how these things come about. Your turn may come in time.”
“Perhaps not twice,” said Hetta. “It is the second marriage side of things that is puzzling them. It is something they have not met.”
“And it is pleasant as well,” said Victor. “Edith cannot leave us, and Father will have companionship.”
Hetta gave another laugh, a little louder.
“He has always had that,” said Sabine, “but there are other things. Now haven’t the rest of you anything to say?”
“We shall have a member of the family who is not really a member,” said Clare. “That should render things less intimate and shameless.”
“Trust Clare to get in something that gives an awkward twist to it all!” said Hetta, almost gaily.
“I feel a failure in that I have not become a member,” said Alfred. “I knew Miss Hallam was destined to make me look small beside her.”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” said Sabine.
“It is not nonsense, Mrs. Ponsonby. You know quite well you would not accept me, and people always follow your lead.”
“Is Miss Hallam going to be Father’s wife?” said Muriel.
“Yes, she is,” said Sabine; “and you will be very fond of her and do everything she tells you.”
“Muriel will not think it is to make much difference,” said Hetta.
“Will she and Father have any children?”
“No, they will not: Edith is not young enough,” said Sabine, who observed a certain directness with the young, the result of her pre-Victorian youth.
“Will Miss Hallam still be my governess?”
“She will be neither Miss Hallam nor your governess. Now that is enough.”
“The news has unloosed Muriel’s tongue,” said France.
“It has not done the same for yours, my dear.”
“We have not observed the right methods with her. People have said that Father ought to marry.”
“Won’t she go on teaching me?” said Muriel.
“No, she will not,” said her grandmother. “She will be Father’s wife, as you said. You will have another governess.”
“More and more expense!” said Hetta. “And I thought at first that the change would be an economy, that it was almost intended for one. It will be less than no good.”
“Marriages are not often intended as an economy,” said Clare, “whatever else they are expected to achieve.”
“I was talking about this marriage.”
“Miss Hallam will not have to be paid, if she is not my governess,” said Muriel. “Oh, but, of course, the new governess will have to be.”
“Muriel, that is very rude,” said Sabine. “Children never talk about grown up people’s affairs. I shall have to forbid you to speak.”
“A change in tactics indicated on more than one ground,” said Victor.
“Let us not interfere with Muriel’s utterance,” said Chilton. “Its natural lack of development may be meant.”
“Well, have you not anything to say to the news? Are you not interested in your father’s life? You took his present of a thousand pounds with great calm, and now you seem as little affected by a more important event. You need not criticise Muriel’s utterance: give your attention to your own.”
“Mater, you make too much of it for them,” said Hetta, looking with amused indulgence at her nephews and nieces. “What can it seem to them, but an event which will leave things much the same? I can’t see what change it will make myself.”
“I can see what change it might make,” said Clare.
“I said ‘will make,’” said her aunt with sighing resignation.
“Miss Hallam is always here,” said Muriel.
“There, of course!” said Hetta.
“Muriel, if you want to talk, you may make a suitable speech,” said Sabine. “Now we will wait to hear it.”
Muriel did not show the discomfiture which was her relative’s expectation for her.
“What shall I call Miss Hallam, Grandma? She can’t be Miss, if she is married.”
“You will have to wait and ask her. And I did not tell you to ask a question.”
Muriel seemed to feel she had now received this injunction.
“What will she be called by other people?”
“Mrs. Ponsonby,” said Clare.
“The same as Grandma?” said Muriel, astonished.
“It does seem unfit,” said Alfred. “I feel with Muriel.”
“Mrs. John Ponsonby,” Hetta instructed her niece. “Grandma is Mrs. Ponsonby; I am Miss Ponsonby; and she will be Mrs. John.”
“Which is the best, Miss Ponsonby or Mrs. John?”
“Well, Miss Ponsonby shows you belonged to the original family,” said Hetta, half laughing. “Now that is the last question.”
This was not to be the case.
“Which is the highest in the house? I mean the next to Grandma?”
“Did you hear what your aunt said?” said Sabine, in a tone which stayed the tongue it had urged to action.
After dinner Hetta went to her room; Sabine lay back in her chair, exhausted and at comparative peace; and her grandchildren talked in hushed tones to each other.
“I suppose we are stunned by the news,” said France. “That is why we failed to do ourselves justice. I certainly failed.”
“I was uncertain what was expected of us,” said Clare.
“Is stunned the same as surprised?” said Muriel.
“An interest in the use of words!” said Chilton. “There are strange results from shock.”
“We might have been required to show distress at Father’s replacing Mother,” said Victor.
“He replaced her by Aunt Hetta long ago,” said Clare. “And Grandma has never been affected by the blank.”
“Was it nice for Aunt Hetta, when Mother died and she had the place?” said Muriel.
“Muriel, your ability for silence has been proved,” said France. “It is your real gift and should be cultivated.”
“I don’t think Aunt Hetta had the place at once,” said Clare. “She gradually worked her way into it.”
“Oughtn’t she to have had it?” said Muriel.
“What are you saying?” said Sabine, rising to her feet and looking fiercely over her stick. “Your Aunt Hetta is a very gifted and remarkable person, in her way the most important person in the house; and you should regard her with great respect and affection, and with deep gratitude for all she has done for you. If you do not, you are coarse and ungrateful people, and quite unworthy of intercourse on her level. I can’t understand your feelings; they show how far you are beneath her; and in you great boys they are unmanly and unchivalrous, and would make your father blush with shame. Now understand that the first person who speaks of her again in that manner, may leave this house and not return. Understand it! Do you understand?”
Sabine rapped her stick on the ground and spoke in a harsh, hoarse voice.
“Yes, Grandma.”
“Who are you, who do you think you are, to be able to speak in such a way of anyone so far above you? What do you think you are? You are raw and ignorant girls and boys, of no use to anyone but yourselves, dependent on others for a roof above your heads, food to put into your mouths, teaching to enable you to associate with the civilised—”
“We have no means of our own,” muttered Chilton. “But why thus expand the phrase?”
“And your aunt is a gifted, experienced woman, with her own powers, her own poise, her own place in your father’s life, from which nothing will dislodge her!” Sabine’s voice rose and became shrill and strained. “Her own place in the esteem of others and many other things you will never have—”
“Whenever people’s advantages are enumerated, we are told they will never be ours,” said France. “Why should nothing fall to us? A place in our father’s life might be natural, and people are even supposed to love their weak and erring offspring best.”
“You ought to understand how to treat your aunt, without my having to teach and train you,” said Sabine, seeming not to hear her grandchildren, and possibly not doing so, as precaution was taken to prevent it; “without my having to browbeat and bully you as if you were idiots or savages—”
“Grandma’s views of the suitable treatment of the simple and afflicted invite criticism,” said France.
“I am glad to see you are crying, Muriel. It shows you understand what I say.”
Muriel, relieved by this view of her tears, raised a lightened face and ceased to shed them.
Sabine’s voice failed and she fell back into her chair, her stick rising into the air and striking Victor. She clutched it to her with a movement of exasperation that he should be in her way, and watched him from under her brows to assure herself he gave no sign. Alfred, who had witnessed the scene in silence, stooped gravely and placed it at her hand.
“Will you see Dr. Chaucer, ma’am?” said Gertrude at the door.
Sabine leant back in her chair and did not speak.
“The mistress is tired,” said Clare. “Show Dr. Chaucer into the library, and we will come to him there.”
“Show him in here,” said Sabine, not lifting her head to dispose of her granddaughters as hostesses. “And tell Miss Hetta.”
Chaucer bent lower than usual over Sabine, having indeed no choice but to do so, and something about him suggested that her condition caused him no surprise.
“I have come, Mrs. Ponsonby, to make my enquiries concerning what I hear has befallen. I am told that Miss Hallam has left your house, and that your son has followed her”—He looked at nothing in particular with fixed eyes—“and am anxious to be assured that nothing untoward is indicated. It occurs to me that she has had some family trouble, and that he is giving her his escort to her home.”
“That could not have occurred to him, as they left at different times,” said Chilton to France.
“Well, he could not say what did occur to him.”
Sabine did not lift her head, but signed to Chilton to explain, and on a second thought transferred the sign to Alfred.
Chaucer turned to the latter with some hesitation, as if he would have preferred to hear a member of the family. Alfred saw it and turned the hint to his purpose.
“No, you must do your duty, Mrs. Ponsonby. What would happen if you began to shift it?”
“Mater, don’t keep poor Dr. Chaucer out of our family excitement,” said Hetta at the door. “We are egotistic enough to think it is of general interest. And I am sure it is of interest to him, as our old friend. Yes, my brother and Miss Hallam have both left the house, Dr. Chaucer. Think of some way in which they may return together.”
Chaucer looked at her in silence.
“Can anyone put it into words?” said Victor. “Muriel, use your new-found gift.”
“I can put it into words,” said Hetta. “I wonder what the rest of you are jibbing at. My brother is fulfilling my long prophecy, Dr. Chaucer, and taking unto himself a wife; and most happily taking Miss Hallam, who has her niche in the house, so that the change will not ruffle its surface. That is a piece of news, isn’t it? We shall soon think of them as on their honeymoon.”
“And is none of you to be present at the ceremony?”
“Oh, well, no; it is a second marriage, and has that atmosphere which rather unfairly characterises such events, which are innocent enough, if not romantic. They wanted it over quickly and nothing said. Then we shall receive them back, as if unawares, and shall be as if nothing has happened.”
“But, Miss Ponsonby, something will have happened,” said Chaucer in a low tone. “There will be a great change.”
“No, that is what we are avoiding in having Miss Hallam. Though we should not take the credit to ourselves: it is my brother who deserves it. He has been very wise in looking all round the situation, and acting with thought for us all. I only hope he has considered himself as well. Have you not anything to say to our news?”
“Nothing, if you have nothing,” said Chaucer, moving away and somehow taking Hetta with him. “But what sort of requital is this, for the years you have given your brother?”
“It is nothing to do with that: I don’t think John means to requite me, or thinks he could. He has explained that I shall not even have the reward of more freedom. He is thinking of increasing his debt rather than repaying it.”
“He must indeed think of his debt at this time.”
“I believe he said he would carry the thought with him, or something of the kind. It was instead of me, I suppose. I can’t go with him on his honeymoon, as I had to explain to him.”
“But, Miss Hetta, when he comes back, there will be the great adjustment,” said Chaucer, who had never addressed Hetta except as Miss Ponsonby.
“Oh, I have almost everything arranged,” said Hetta, in a tone of simple explanation. “I am used to the change and growth of a family. I have always had to organise it.”
Chaucer stood, almost imperceptibly shaking his head.
“The first flush of feeling renders people strangely blind to the claims of others.”
“These are not in such a flush of feeling: that is a hardly fair description. They are good, considerate, matter-of-fact, altruistic people. We must not talk of them as if they were lovers in a selfish sense.”
“The future must stretch before you with many problems.”
“There must be a certain number. I wish it had happened before the girls were grown and set. I often spoke to John about it. I shall have to arrange all the shifting and adapting. He will have nothing to do with it.”
“Miss Hetta, it is you who will have to do the great adapting.”
“No, it is I who will not have to do it. I am the free and unaffected person. It makes me feel quite apart and selfish, an unusual feeling for me. I shall have my old ways with my brother, the ways which make his life; and his wife will fill in the spaces between, which will be very useful, as I have long wanted them filled. It is really Clare’s place which she is taking, or the place which should have been Clare’s. I don’t commend Clare enough in it, to be too sorry about her being supplanted; but I wish, as I said, that this had happened while she was younger.”
“She is still at an age when adaptation should be easy,” said Chaucer, not free from his idea of adaptation performed at another stage.
Hetta turned to the others, and Sabine’s voice was heard.
“Now, Muriel, say something pretty and suitable to Dr. Chaucer. He has hardly heard you speak.”
Chaucer advanced with a smile, perhaps of anticipation.
“I think I am going to call Miss Hallam, Edith.”
“Are you? That is a great advance for one so young. Your aunt sees fit to permit it?”
“Well, yes,” said Hetta, who heard it for the first time. “Edith has no other name but Hallam, and that she is giving up, and Ponsonby is worked hard enough. And I don’t think she wants to take any stand-offish position with the young. She has lived with them, and is prepared to go on in the same way. That is the settled plan.”
“But she is not going to teach me any more.”
“Muriel, that is characteristic of youth,” said Chaucer, shaking in disproportionate mirth. “To see the changes in people’s lives in their bearing upon your own! That will put even more upon your aunt.”
“I am the official engager of the governess,” said Sabine. “I have made one discovery, and now I must make a second.”
Chaucer looked towards the window at this precise enumeration.
“Yes, the choice is my mother’s duty,” said Hetta. “We are making no change at all.”
Chaucer still looked dubious over this account.
“My thoughts turn to Clare,” went on Hetta. “Edith will in effect take her place and leave her free.”
“I have no place to be taken. And Edith will have a place of her own, which has not been occupied since Mother died.”
“Dear, dear, this bale and ban on second marriages!” said Hetta, raising and dropping her arms. “It does seem rather unfair. All this sentiment and memory! Well, it can’t be helped. They drag up a past which should be just a past, and I suppose must go on doing so. Secondary things are not meant to be copies of the first, and might be left to do their own work in their own way. But I suppose it is not to be. Of course it is not. Well, well!”
“Is secondary the same as second?” said Muriel.
“Never mind,” said France.
“Dr. Chaucer is staring more than ever at Aunt Hetta, isn’t he?”
“Well, she can hardly object to his following her with his eyes.”
“Perhaps he feels she would only accept a doglike devotion,” said Chilton.
“Most of us accept any devotion which is given us,” said France.