Page 69 of Threads that Remain

“I am not saying anything, Mamma. I am only observing.”

“You are a very impertinent girl.”

“I am fifteen,” said Madeline, with a shrug, “and I have a brother that has been at university for three years. He must have learned more than just Latin.” And the whole table, including the person who was the object of the remark, and who had gone a colour that might be described as a fine, warm, and unmistakable crimson, burst into laughter.

Willoughby did not laugh. He had been leaning back in his chair, at the foot of the table, with his glass in his hand, looking at the face across from him with an expression that he made no attempt to disguise; and it seemed to Sophia, who had glanced at him, in that moment, over the candles, that there was in it a great tenderness, and a great pride, and a very slight, wry, self-mocking sadness, as of a man who has been permitted, late in life, and without the least right, to be present at the tail end of a very good story. She felt it had been a good thing for their family to have Henry in it.

The messenger came at eleven.

It was a fine still night. The moon was up, and there was a wide silver light lying upon the park; and it was in the drawing-room, where the family had gathered after supper, with the windows open upon the terrace, and Madeline at the harp, playing something slow, that there came, in the hush between two notes, a distant sound upon the drive; a sound of a horse, ridden hard, at a gallop, over gravel. It came nearer. It stopped. There was a noise in the hall, and a voice, and a step; and in the door, a moment afterwards, with the sweat running down his face, and his hat in his hand, and a most peculiar expression, appeared the Colonel’s second groom.

“Mr. Henry, sir,” said he. “Begging your pardon. It is from the master.”

He held out a note. It was folded very small, and had been written in pencil, in the Colonel’s small square careful hand, upon a leaf torn out of a pocket-book; and Henry, who had risen, with the colour draining from his face, took it and read it under the lamp, standing perfectly still.

My dear boy, it said. I am sorry to send such news on the very night you were to be happy. Mrs. Smith was taken ill at three o’clock this afternoon, at Allenham, in the garden, under the mulberry. It is a seizure; Dr. Adair thinks a severe one. She is quite herself, and has spoken, and is not in pain; but he says that we must not hope. She has asked for you. I do not think you should wait for the morning. — B.

There was a very long silence in the room.

“It is Aunt Smith,” said Henry.

“Aunt —” said Willoughby.

He had risen, too. He stood, with his hand upon the back of the chair, and a sharp grey pallor coming into his face; and he repeated the word, in a low, stunned, unbelieving tone, as though it were in a foreign language. “Aunt. She was well in April. I had a letter from her. She said that the — that the pear tree had been cut.”

“She has been failing since the winter,” said Henry, quietly. “She wrote that I should not tell you. She made me promise. She said that she did not wish to be made a fuss of, and that you had a great deal else to think of.” He folded the note. His hand was not perfectly steady. “I must go. I must go at once. Sir —”

“Go,” said Willoughby, hoarsely. “Of course. Take the chaise. Take the bays. Sophia, ring the bell —”

“I shall come with you,” said the Captain.

He had not raised his voice. He had got up, from the window-seat, where he had been sitting with his long legs stretched before him, and was standing, very straight and square, in the middle of the carpet; and his black eyebrow, which had gone up at the first word, had come slowly down. “She is my great-aunt. She had me to Allenham a dozen times, and gave me a peppermint, and told me what she thought of my hair. I have not been a good nephew. I should like to be there.”

“Charles —”

“I am coming, sir,” said the Captain quite decidedly, and looked at his father; and Willoughby, who had opened his mouth to say something, closed it, and nodded.

They went at half past eleven. It was the last thing that Henry noticed, before he got into the carriage, that a small figure in grey had come out upon the steps, in the moonlight, with a shawl over her cap, and a bundle in her hand; and that Sophia Willoughby, who had never in her life been known to do anything upon impulse, was holding out to him, with a face which she tried to make severe, a packet of sandwiches, and a flask of brandy, and a folded rug.

“You are to eat them,” said Sophia. “Both of you. You are not to sit in a chaise all night on an empty stomach. I have seen what it does.” She stopped. She said, in a much lower voice, quite abruptly: “She is a very great woman, your Aunt Smith. I did not think so. I never had a chance to say. Will you tell her that I said so?”

“I shall,” said Henry.

“Then that is all.” She stepped back. “Go on, then. Go.”

They drove through the night.

It was twenty-eight miles, by the cross-road, over the downs; and the two young men, in the swaying, dark, jolting interior of the chaise, with the rug over their knees, and the lamps throwing a long moving light upon the hedges, did not, for the first hour, exchange a single word. It was the Captain who spoke.

“You are worrying.”

“Yes.”

“She is very old. She is eighty-one, and she is as strong as a horse; and I think that she has quite made up her mind to be ready.” He said it with a surprising gentleness. “I have known it, you know, this year past. She told me. She said, in April, when we were there: Charles, I shall not be here forever, and you are to be good to your brother. I did not say anything. I did not think that she meant it.”

“She told you?”

“She tells everybody something. It is her way of having the last word.” The Captain looked out of the window. The great dark shoulders of the downs were going by, against a sky full of stars. “I am not going to say that I understand. I do not think that I have ever known what it was, that you went through. I was seven years old. I thought that it was a great lark, to have a brother. I did not know that there was a great deal to be sorry for.” He hesitated. He said, in a low, awkward, quite unlike-himself voice: “I am very glad, you know. That it was you. That it is you. I have thought about it sometimes, in the night. I have thought that if it had been anybody else, I do not think that I should have been able to bear it.”