Mother and Son (7 page)

Miss Burke turned to Emma.

“Do you think I shall suit you, Miss Greatheart? I have not pretended to be anything but what I am.”

“I am sure you have not, dear. And what a question, when you are a family friend! And when you persecute Plautus, as if it were your established privilege, which of course it is. You cannot expect an answer.”

“I shall be glad to settle down. I have never felt so much at home on my first day.”

“No, I thought perhaps you had not. And we are quite dependent on you. There is no such thing as time. I have not asked you if you can be happy with us. When what we give is food and shelter and a salary, and happiness does not depend on material things, it seems a foolish question.”

“You don't know how much worse—how different it is in most places.”

“Yes, I do. I think it is more different than it is. We are never as different from other people as we think, or as we ought to be. But I hope Hester will not be able to bear it. I am sure Mrs. Hume is the very person for her. Wanting companions when she has so many! Of course the companion will be put to other purposes.”

“Am I to direct the maid? Or do we both take our orders from you?”

“You could both take them from Hester, if she were to be here. But now you will give them all to the maid. You will treat her as you do Plautus, and she will look up to you and be content.”

“I shall remember she is a human being. That will be enough.”

“Well, dear, if you think it best. You will have to remind yourself of it, if she does not.”

Plautus edged round the door, came across the room, and laid a dead bird at Emma's feet.

“Oh, it is too much. Everything he has is mine. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friend. And he knew we could not spare his life; so he found another and laid it down. And perhaps he could not spare it himself. What an element of pathos there is in it!”

“And elements of other things,” said Miss Burke. “He is simply a jungle beast.”

“Yes, we all prey on each other. The jungle is never dead. It is a strange thought.”

“Oh, cruel Plautus!” said Hester, entering. “I did
my best to prevent it. But I was a mere human being and could do nothing.”

“And Plautus is a thing apart. His heart beats in tune with the great heart of Nature. And Nature has no pity.”

“You are all in the jungle,” said Miss Burke.

“No, did you not see Plautus come out of it? He came and laid his all at my feet. What there is in a simple action!”

“Oh, he tried to give it to me at first,” said Hester. “But I would not accept it. I cannot countenance everything.”

“He gave me no choice. He simply came and told me it was mine.”

“He had already told me that.”

“He put all his heart into the giving,” said Emma, in her dreamy tone. “I could see it in his eye, the complete renunciation.”

“Oh, naughty Plautus.” said Hester, shaking her finger. “To catch the bird for me, and think it was a welcome attention.”

“You had better share the bird,” said Miss Burke. “Plautus will not mind.”

“Yes, make us see ourselves through your eyes, dear,” said Emma. “You see us through them. We have noticed it.”

Plautus carried the bird from the room.

“How clever to solve the problem!” said Hester.

“Poor Plautus, how he wanted it!” said Emma. “Wasn't it pretty to see his lower nature triumphing? So much better than seeing ours doing it. Miss Burke was quite shocked by that.”

“He cannot want to eat the bird,” said the latter. “He is overfed.”

“No, it is sport for its own sake. When we hunt a fox, we do not want to eat it. Perhaps it seems to make it worse. But I believe Plautus did want to eat the bird. He has taken it away to try to do it.”

“Have you ever kept a dog?” said Miss Burke, speculating on the result of this.

“Yes, but he could not have been a proper one. When we moved to this house, he did not make his way back on foot to the other. And when someone died, he was never found on the grave. And his behaviour with a bone could only be called grudging. He was on a different level.”

“Yes, Plautus does all he is supposed to do,” said Hester, “and some things he can't be prevented from doing. Ah, Plautus, come in and tell me if you will think of me when I am gone.”

Plautus walked to the fire, giving no sign of doing so while she was there.

“Shall we shut the door?” said Emma. “He seems to be settling down.”

“Oh, that is why you keep it open,” said Miss Burke.

“Well, we should not want a draught for its own sake,” said Hester.

“It seems that the house is run for the cat.”

“For Plautus? Well, it belongs to him. We are here as his companions.”

“It has been practice for you. You can tell Mrs. Hume you have had experience.”

“But she may not know that a cat is human.”

“Of course, that is possible,” said Miss Burke.

“Dryness is wasted on us, dear,” said Emma.

“All that we have is his,” said Hester. “Miss Burke will learn to feel the same.”

“What I have, would not be much good to him, if he wants things on this scale.”

“Oh, Plautus must have an establishment. It is his due.”

“Your feeling for him really comes from the maternal instinct,” said Miss Burke, driven to this length.

“Well, of course we are frustrated, dear,” said Emma, “and the result of over-civilisation; though I hardly think there is such a thing, or there would be other signs of it. But only frustrated people can live for themselves. Fulfilled people seem to live for others. And we are not fitted for that.”

“I thought you lived for Plautus.”

“Yes, dear, we know what you thought.”

“I did not really mean anything.”

“No, no, dear, it was the book that meant it. Those books always say a thing is something else, and tell you what it is. And of course it is that, and we know about it; but it is better not to say what we know. There might be some reason for our knowing it. Just as there is for saying it.”

“I must express my regret, Miss Wolsey, that I am here alone to receive you. My parents are obliged to be out, and my young cousins were not deemed equal to the task of making you welcome; I should say to the privilege of doing so.”

“It is better to meet like this, when I know none of you. Mrs. Hume took a risk and engaged me without an interview. I am more of a stranger than I might be.”

“I believe my mother prides herself on her power to judge people through the post. She says they reveal themselves—I believe her words were ‘expose themselves'—unconsciously through that medium. We may deduce that your revelation was a happy one.”

“And what the eye does not see, the heart cannot rue,” said Hester.

“And what the eye does see,” said Rosebery, taking her coat in the manner natural to a matter of course, “the heart may salute, if I am permitted an opinion. And now may I attend to your comfort? At what distance will you be from the fire?”

“This chair seems to strike the mean.”

“But it also,” said Rosebery, in grave concern, “coincides with the vested rights of my mother. So I will take the choice as an augury of your agreement with her, and ask you to make another. We do not wish her return to be the signal for your displacement. And she herself would not wish it.”

“Thank you very much for telling me. It would be a poor beginning to be found in her place.”

“It would not be the most auspicious one,” said Rosebery, smiling and then altering his tone. “These little sanctities of a household, Miss Wolsey, have a significance beyond themselves and do not invite a breach. I thank you for respecting them. And now I will ring for tea.”

“That is a pleasant word. My journey seemed longer than it was.”

“These little, cross-country journeys are very tedious,” said Rosebery, in serious conviction. “They seem to lack the capacity of winding to their end.”

“It is the better to feel at home, when they have done so.”

“Miss Wolsey, I trust you will feel that in this house. I was distressed to learn the reason of your coming, and to know that we must see our gain as the result of your loss. But I hope there may be compensations.”

“I shall have my share of the gain. It is always something to know fresh people and learn fresh lives. It adds to oneself in the end. One is a larger person.”

“That sort of courage will carry you far. I could find it in me to envy you. We are proof against misfortune when we have that within us, that enables us to use it.”

“Well, tea is a help in whatever we have to do.”

“Miss Wolsey,” said Rosebery in a serious tone, “I am going to ask you to pour it out I think a man never looks so misplaced as when he attempts to preside at the tea table. It is so emphatically the woman's place. And
I propose to safeguard myself against cutting so sorry a figure.”

“Well, am I to come to the table or is the table to come to me? The first will involve my taking the sacred seat.”

“Mohammed will come to the mountain,” said Rosebery, bringing the table forward. “And I admit that in a measure ‘sacred' is the word. I speak as a mother's son, and perhaps in a fuller than the usual sense.”

“Do you take milk and sugar?”

“Miss Wolsey, I am going to make a confession. I take sugar as a rule, because I have not had the heart to break it to my mother that I have lost my taste for it. She has always indulged me with the generous lumps. I will drink my tea sugarless on this occasion, and find the stolen waters sweet, the more so that they are unsweetened.”

“Do you lead a busy life?”

“I am less occupied than I might, and perhaps should be, as a man in the prime of life. I have been much tied to my mother of late, though there is no implication of unwillingness. It is hoped that your presence may enable me to be of more use to my father, who is engaged in the country duties, in which I am his natural assistant, and to which I am his successor. The elder of his nephews will eventually follow me.”

“You mean, if you do not marry?” said Hester, after a pause.

“I mean, as I shall not marry,” said Rosebery, with grave emphasis. “We are told to know ourselves; and it is permissible to claim that degree of self-knowledge, and to give my account of it.”

“Many men have said what you say, and found their mistake.”

“Very few men of my age. I am no beardless boy, to change my serious intentions with every month. My account of myself may be taken as the true one.”

“Well, you look very comfortable in here,” said another voice, as Miranda entered with her husband and niece and nephews, her eyes going rapidly about the room. “How do you do, Miss Wolsey? I am glad you are here safely, and are making yourself at home.”

“Your son has helped me to be that. I could hardly have gone so far by myself. And I shall feel more so, now that I meet you all, and begin to be one of you.”

“You are very much what I imagined you to be,” said Miranda, smiling as she shook hands, and suggesting by her tone that she did not refer only to appearance. “I wonder if you can say the same of me.”

“I told Miss Wolsey of your power of divination through the post, Mother. And it may appear that she can claim her share of it.”

“Yes, my imagination served me well,” said Hester, not mentioning the assistance rendered to it by Miss Burke. “I feel as if I should have known you, perhaps not anywhere, but in any place where you were likely to be.”

“I would perhaps not go as far as that. But my picture was not very wrong. Now I must introduce my husband. Julius, you have not met Miss Wolsey. My son has done more than introduce himself. You children can shake hands and then keep out of sight. Now shall we have the tea-table in its proper place? It seems to have taken a leap.”

“We moved it, Mother,” said Rosebery, in an open tone, “or rather I did so, in order that Miss Wolsey should not be found in occupation of your seat, an encroachment she was anxious to avoid.”

“It is you who would have had the seat, and you could have moved when I came in. Oh, did Miss Wolsey pour out the tea?”

“In response to a request from me that she would save me from the situation, which never seems to me to show a man to advantage.”

“That is needlessly self-conscious in your own home. And Miss Wolsey need hardly have been troubled with duties so soon.”

“Do you not agree with me, Father, that a man officiating at the tea-table is a signal example of a person out of place?”

“The tableau was certainly better as it was.”

“Did you see it, as you came in?” said his wife.

“I saw it, as it was dispersed.”

“There was no need for that. Miss Wolsey could have poured out tea for us all,” said Miranda, with a suggestion that this might have been required of her.

“Now, Mother!” said Rosebery. “When your first request was for the table to be restored to its place!”

“It may as well be put to its use, now it is there,” said Julius.

“Well, shall we pursue the sugar basin?” said his wife. “I do not know how it got on to that table by itself. The things seem to have taken on a life of their own. And you must have had your tea without sugar, Rosebery.”

“Well, I will have another cup with it, when other people have been supplied.”

“Can I give you another cup, Miss Wolsey?”

“No, thank you. I have had more than one.”

“Ring the bell, Adrian,” said Miranda, looking into the teapot. “There is not enough tea here for us all. You must have had several cups too, my son.”

“I suggest, Mother, that the pot was supplied for two people, and that the onslaught of the rest of you has upset the balance.”