Mother and Son (22 page)

“There is a way in which I may do that.”

“Then you are making me a proposal?”

“You do understand me. We may trust a woman's instinct. May I take it as an augury of further understanding? Your selfless nature is known to me, and I am first among men to value such a nature in a woman. There could be no better foundation for married life.”

“There is nothing selfless in wanting a competence, and less in marrying somebody to get one.”

“You shall marry me and have one. You shall put anxiety behind. You shall be the mistress of your own home, take your stand with other wives. Other feeling will grow upon that foundation.”

“I suppose you would not marry me only for my sake?”

“It would be also for my own. My mother's death left me desolate. It is another thing that I offer you, my own need. You may not rank it as the least.”

“Your mother would not have me as her companion. What would she say to my being yours?”

“And a companion on another level. It was not the time for her to foresee it. But when I accompanied you to the station, on the occasion that will stand out in both our lives, it crossed my mind that marriage would be your solution, and that you were better fitted for it than might appear. I do not know what thoughts you had of me.”

“I expect my thoughts were on myself.”

“It is small wonder. You were treading a rough and lonely course. As I saw you pass from my sight, frail and lion-hearted, I found myself wondering if our paths would cross again. And the wonder seems to have been a premonition. You were led to a house that was to bring you back to mine. Little did you think, when you spoke of us to Miss Wolsey, that you were laying the foundation of your own future.”

“It was meant to be that of hers. And I did not think very much of it. But things seem to have gone well.”

“Have they gone too well?” said Rosebery, bending towards her. “I think I need not feel I am stooping to gossip. I find feminine companionship in all its aspects congenial, and may be forgiven for making the most of it. It has occurred to me that Miss Wolsey's eyes rested on my father with preference. How does it appear to the sharper feminine eye? Is it simply her concern for his widowed state?”

“It may have been that. It has grown into something more. And we must hope it will grow no further. Your father's eyes have their own object.”

“I have seen it, Miss Burke. ‘Miss Burke!' The name has become dear to me. I will use it yet for a while. I see how the wind lies. I see it with mingled feelings. I know not whether to feel shock or hope or sorrow.”

“Miss Wolsey must see it too, and must feel one of those things, and perhaps more than one.”

Rosebery tiptoed to the window, as if his footfall could be heard outside, and beckoned her towards him.

“They are coming in. And I discern an air of resolution. They are on the way to their confession. And we
will hear it and make our own. We shall stand before judges who share our guilt.”

“Well, my boy, you have eyes and ears, and no doubt have used them. You have seen the way the wind lies.”

“Father, those have been my very words. They have actually passed my lips. And they may continue to serve us. Do you also observe the lie of the wind?”

“I do respect you, dear,” said Emma at once. “Marrying a bachelor, and at a possible age! It is so dignified to be conventional. I have always thought that.”

“We might have observed it,” said Julius. “At any other time we should have. So this is not the only house that is to have a mistress.”

“An humbler one is to have one, Father, and a mistress who will like it no less for being what it is. It will suit us both to tread the simpler way.”

“It is more and more dignified,” said Emma.

“Father, I read your mind; I read it as an open book. I know the question you would ask yourself. ‘What would my mother say to us?' I will put it in my own way, and ask what she does say. And so well do I know her, that I can give the answer. Yes, I hear the little, cynical speech that would hold so much truth. ‘Change must come, and bring other change. It is another word for life. People cannot stay at a standstill because one journey is at an end.'”

“Well, she might say that,” said Julius. “You can do no more than say it for her. And it does no good to imagine her saying anything else. We can do nothing for her now.”

“It seems we ought to do something,” said Emma, “after what she has said.”

“Miss Greatheart, we can live our lives,” said Rosebery. “It is what she would ask of us.”

“It seems a safe demand,” said Julius, “though I doubt if she would have made it. She might have seen no need.”

The door opened and a start went through the group. A change came into the room. Hester and the children entered, smiling and conscious, carrying some clothes they used for charades.

“Now we have a surprise for you,” said Hester. “There is a play for you to see. Alice has written it, and Francis arranged it for us. We are the harmless, necessary actors, and you are the equally indispensable audience.”

“Miss Wolsey,” said Rosebery, moving forward, “we also have a play to present, a play that has its action in real life. It may interest you the more for that. You see us as we stand. It is thus that we shall take our parts on the stage of life.”

Hester looked swiftly from one pair to another.

“A modern farce is it? A mating in the approved mock way? Suitable because it is the opposite. Well, it will serve its purpose. We must see one play after the other, and judge between them. I am inclined to back the children's.”

“Miss Wolsey, we will see your play indeed. It will make a celebration for us on this day of our lives. But I must bring my meaning home. As we stand before you, so we shall always stand. We claim your
recognition of the truth. The reality must precede the mime.”

“It is you who are coupled with Miss Burke, and your father with Miss Greatheart?” said Hester, contracting her brows.

Rosebery inclined his head.

“Well, what am I to say? I am not supposed to felicitate you? It is too much of a house upon the sand. I do not know how much to take as real.”

“The whole of it, as I have said.”

There was a pause.

“Poor Mrs. Hume!” said Hester.

“My mother is dead,” said Rosebery.

“That is what I mean. You felt she was not. And now she is.”

“She would rejoice in our happiness.”

“But she does not rejoice in it,” said Hester, raising her eyes to his with a hint of a smile. “She no longer commands the present tense. As I said, poor Mrs. Hume!”

“You have thought of her as dead,” said Julius.

“But you have not,” said Hester, flashing her eyes over his face. “She had a sort of life; she had it in your minds and hearts. She has it no longer.”

“This makes no difference to her. And you do not think it does.”

“I do not know what to think. It makes a difference to her memory. And that I suppose is a part of her.”

“It is a part of those who remember her.”

“I am bewildered and uncertain. What am I to take as truth? I cannot take this. There is something unsound
about it. And I do not hear Emma's voice. Why is it silent?”

“She does not venture to use it.”

“And she the person of courage! But I see she must have lost it now. Courage will not stand anything. Poor Emma, how she needs a friend!”

“I hardly think she has one.”

“Then be one to her, Mr. Hume, and rescue her from her plight. It is a simple and sorry one. You will not leave her in it.”

“I am to be to her more than a friend. Rosebery has said the truth.”

“Said the truth! Why use that scriptural phrase? It gives such a sense of unreality. But I suppose it is all unreal.”

“It is as my son has said.”

“Your son?” said Hester, again contracting her brows. “Oh, you call Rosebery your son. But he is to marry Miss Burke. And when people marry, there is truth between them. Or is there not, when it is truth like this?”

There was a silence.

“So you are not a friend,” said Julius.

“Not a friend? You will know better than that, when you come to look back on this. Not a friend, when I am saving you from a future based on falseness, and saving you at this expense! You will come to call me one indeed.”

“What future have I at my age? I can only grasp at the present.”

“Stop grasping; it is not a good thing; the very word
shows it. Go back to your life in the past. It is the thing that is yours.”

“Miss Wolsey,” said Rosebery, moving forward, “may I remind you of your function in this house? It is not that of critic and authority. Grateful as we are to you for your service to us, we do not wish or authorise you to go beyond.”

“And do I wish it? How could I wish to appear in this light, and lose any feeling I have won from you? Who in her senses would wish it? But I cannot look on and see lives laid waste for want of a word in time. I have said the word and can be silent. Whatever happens, it will have been said.”

“Miss Wolsey,” said Rosebery, in a more deliberate tone, “would you be taking one line, if my father had made his offer to you instead of to your friend? I am not asking if you would have accepted it; that is beside the mark; but would you have been so convinced of its unfitness? Is there not some feeling that your own life will be the poorer, that in this way or another you yourself will be dispossessed?”

“Is there?” said Hester, looking him in the eyes. “It is true that this is estranging for us, but I must see the guilt as mine. It was I who broke up our life and brought it about. And so it is for me to deal with it. I can see no question there.”

“Well, Emma now follows a course of her own,” said Julius. “You will have to forgive each other.”

“I must sue indeed for forgiveness. To continue your scriptural phrase, I knew not what I did. But I can do my best to atone. We can go back to our life together.
It was a life that satisfied her, and that I was wrong to end. I turned aside on a way of my own. I became involved with all of you here. I am interested in the young, and these children seemed to need what I could give. But I can put it behind me. I can close this chapter of my life. It is a thing that can be forgotten.”

“I shall not forget it. Emma and I will keep the memory. It has led to our knowledge of each other.”

“It has not done that,” said Hester, gravely. “It has done the opposite thing. It is easy to confuse them. It has led you to a misconception, and that in its turn has led you on. And Emma, the believer in freedom, the stickler for the untrammelled life! What are her real feelings? Let her speak for herself, if she dares.”

“I do not dare. No one would in my place.”

“I think no one would,” said Julius.

“Here is someone who would dare,” said Rosebery, laying his hand on Miss Burke's shoulder. “What lies between her and me is open to the world.”

“And why should it not be?” said Hester. “A wish for safety and ease is a sound reason for marrying. But it is not Emma's reason.”

“No, I had to have others.”

“You want to lose the disgrace of spinsterhood before you die?”

“Well, we have to do everything before that.”

“So your jests have been in earnest? Your gibes at yourself have been sincere? Your humour has been bitter, when I thought it was sound?”

“I do not think humour is ever sound. If it is, it is something else.”

“I wonder if anything is ever sound,” said Hester.

“Miss Wolsey,” said Rosebery, in grave tones, “you suggest a betrayal of yourself. We might imagine a voice saying: ‘Hell holds no fury like a woman scorned.'”

“I suppose that is the voice that Emma heard. And she suppressed her fury well. She kept the disguise so long, that I did not question it. And I must wish she had kept it to the end. But the moment of shock is passing. I must adapt myself to a different friend. I must be glad that her quarrel with life is healed, that the fury can die away.”

“Miss Wolsey, may we say the same thing of you? It is time it was said.”

“Why doesn't Miss Wolsey want Uncle to marry Miss Greatheart?” said Adrian.

“So the children are in the room,” said Julius. “We have had an audience, when we were to have been one. Well, the curtain can fall now.”

“Will Miss Wolsey stay here, when Miss Greatheart is Uncle's wife?”

“No, of course she will not,” said Hester. “There will be no need. Miss Greatheart will manage things for you. She will be your own relation. She will be a sort of stepmother. You can think of her as that.”

“They need not begin to-day,” said Julius.

“Why, I think it is a good day for the beginning. They will have to realise the demands on them. And they can also realise their own claims. I used the word, ‘stepmother', without thinking. It seemed to come to my lips of itself. It was a true word spoken almost in jest.”

“You are not speaking in jest.”

“Well, there is the meaning underneath it. As I say, the word has essential truth.”

“What does she mean?” said Emma.

“Oh, what you know I mean. There are no secrets between you and Julius now. You know his life and what the children are to him. You have heard from his lips what I heard from them on the day when his wife died. I hope you will not take it as hard as she did, that anyhow it will not cause your death. But of course your bond with the family is a light and late one.”

“It was a shock to her,” said Julius, in a quiet tone. “But her heart would not have held out long. Emma does not know what the children are to me, but I have looked to telling her. It is true that I shall hide nothing.”

“And, after all, she is only your third romance. It is not many for a man of your age. Though I rather resent your being her first one. It is a feeling for equality between you, that has no reason in it. Of course men and women are different.”