The Third Miss Symons Part 9

Henrietta often thought with affection and grat.i.tude of the little old aunt, who had died many years back; but, as she would have been the first to own, her old age was not nearly so successful. Her house was not a centre for everybody. She had some elderly ladies with whom she exchanged visits, but young people disliked her, and children were afraid of her.

Ever since she settled in England, she had made earnest attempts to curb her temper. But the companion of a lifetime is not easily shaken off at fifty-five, and more often than not she was quite unaware of crossness, from which all around were suffering severely. On the very rare occasions that she did realize it, she went back to the self she had been as a child, descended from the pedestal of her age and generation, and said she was sorry.

One day she and Annie had a long serious battle. The question in the first instance was whether Annie had chipped off the nose of the china pug-dog on the mantelpiece, a relic of the old house at Willstead; Henrietta always had a tender feeling for relics. The arguments marshalled by Annie were against Henrietta, but arguments never had much weight with her. Besides, the battle pa.s.sed on from the definite point of the nose to vague but bitter attacks on character. Henrietta always had in her mind an ideal servant, who accepted scolding not merely with meekness but with grat.i.tude, and was fond of quoting her, to the exasperation of the real servants. After half an hour Annie began to cry noisily, so that Henrietta's words were drowned. The interview came to an end. Annie went downstairs and told Cook, but she wasted few tears or thoughts on the matter, and almost at once they were laughing cheerfully over their young men, as they sat at needlework.

Henrietta did think, fidgeting about the room while she thought, taking things out of their places and putting them where they ought not to be, in a fuss of discomfort. At last she rang the bell.

"The lamp, please, Annie."

"The lamp 'm," said Annie; "but you don't want it for half an hour yet, do you, 'm, it's such a beautiful evening?"

It was impossible ever to quell Annie.

"The lamp, please," repeated Henrietta, "and I should like to--I think you ought to--I feel that in a--what I want you to realize is that you should keep a great watch over your temper. When one comes to my age one sees that there is--and you should not put it off till too late as people sometimes--as I have done."

Annie's sharp ears heard the last little murmur. Henrietta rather hoped they would not, though it was for the sake of the murmur that she had rung the bell.

Annie said "Yes 'm," very pleasantly, and yielded about the lamp. She told cook afterwards, with some amus.e.m.e.nt, "She's funny, I've always said that, but," she added, "I've known some I should say was funnier."

This opinion may be worth recording, as it was one of the highest tributes to her character Henrietta ever received.

On the whole during those latter years she improved, and in the general reformation of her character she raised the standard of her reading. She confined herself in the mornings and afternoon to mildly scandalous memoirs of Frenchwomen and biographies of Church dignitaries, keeping her costume novels for the evening.

She often saw Evelyn, and they talked of the past, but they never regained the almost heavenly intimacy of that night. They seldom met without some disagreeableness from Henrietta, and she did not like the boys, there was nothing of Evelyn in them, while they for their part could not imagine why their mother cared for their aunt Henrietta. It was a continual struggle for Evelyn not to be impatient with her; much as she longed to, she could not keep on the high plane of devotion, which had brought such happiness to both.

CHAPTER XIII

Henrietta died when she was sixty-three. Her father and stepmother were long dead, also her second brother, whom none of the family had seen for years. When her relations were sent for, it was very cold weather in January, and Louie and Minna did not obey the summons. They deplored it continually afterwards, and explained to one another how appalling the wind had been, and what care they had to take for their children's sake, and how Henrietta had frightened them so much the year before by sending for them when there was no need, that they naturally could not be expected to realize that this time it really was important.

William came, looking more benevolent than ever with his very becoming white hair. Henrietta said that she thought it was the last time she should see him, but he a.s.sured her it was just the cold which had pulled her down a little, and she would be all right again as soon as the wind changed. "It's wretched, knocks everybody up." He looked so hearty and mundane that it almost seemed, when he was in the room, as if there could not be such a thing as death.

They talked about the drought last summer, and William's son, who was a planter in Ceylon, and the noise of the motor-buses in London, until William said he must go for his train. He was allowing a quarter of an hour too much time, for he was able to stay and talk a little while with the doctor, who called when he was there.

"There isn't any chance, you say."

"No, I am afraid not. Miss Symons' heart has been delicate for some years; it gives her very little strength to stand against this attack."

"Um! I was afraid so," said William, and he was glad to get out of the house, and buy a _Pall Mall_.

The inspector niece came down (uninvited), very energetic, and very kind in using the last few days of her holidays in nursing a disagreeable reactionary relation. She dominated the nurse, who was much meeker than nurses usually are, and quite quelled her poor aunt, too weak to protest even at attacks on the monarchy. But Henrietta was much happier when the niece's holidays came to an end, and she was left to die quietly and dully with the nurse.

Evelyn was away in Egypt with Herbert for her health, and by a most unfortunate accident she did not get the first telegram announcing Henrietta's dangerous illness. Poor Henrietta asked constantly if there was nothing from her, and as she got weaker, and a little wandering, she kept on crying like a child: "I want Evelyn." They cabled again, and when the answer came, "Starting home at once," it was too late, and Henrietta was not sufficiently herself to understand it.

As soon as Evelyn got home, she went to Bath. The little house was still as it was, but for some legacies which a careful nephew had already abstracted. But the place of the dead seemed to have been filled even more quickly than usual. Annie, as she said, had only waited "till the pore old lady was taken" to marry comfortably with a saddler, and the parlourmaid was already established in a very smart town situation.

There was an unknown caretaker to look after the house, which was to let. Evelyn saw the doctor and the clergyman, who both spoke kindly of Miss Symons. "We shall miss your sister very much," said Mr. Vaughan, "she was always doing kind things,"--and he did miss her to a certain extent, but there is a ceaseless supply of generous, touchy incapable old ladies in England, and he could not be expected to miss her very much. Evelyn went to see the nurse, and could hear from her more of what she wanted. The nurse was a kind, sweet girl, the centre of an affectionate family, and engaged to a devoted young clerk.

"Oh, Mrs. Ferrers, if only you could have come back in time," she said, sobbing, "or if you could have written. She _did_ want you so; every time there was a ring it was, 'Is that from her?' and I heard her say to herself: 'I thought she would be _sure_ to come.' I simply had to go out in the pa.s.sage, I couldn't keep back my tears, and of course one must always be bright before a patient; it is so bad for them if one isn't.

Some nieces and nephews came, and one of them stayed several days, and two brothers, I think; and there were several members of the family there for the funeral, and she had some simply lovely wreaths, and the church was nice and full, numbers of her poor people were there,"

brought there, as surely the kind nurse knew, not from love of Henrietta, but from love of funerals, "but when your wire did come I cried for joy, though we couldn't make her take it in, poor dear; still it seemed as if someone really cared for her. Oh, she looked so lovely and peaceful at the end, all the trouble gone."

This was a comforting deception, which the nurse thought it justifiable to practise on relations, for in fact death had not changed Henrietta; there had been no transfiguration to beauty and n.o.bility, she looked what she had been in life--insignificant, feeble, and unhappy.

"Miss Symons asked me to give you this box," said the nurse. "She made me promise I would give it you over and over again."

Evelyn found it was an inlaid sandalwood box, which she had sent from India as a present from the first baby. In it she found Herbert's letter announcing the death of little Madeline, hers and the other two babies'

photographs, and a sheet of notepaper, tied with blue ribbon. On it was written, "I can't tell you how much good you have done me, I seem to have been living for this for fifteen years. EVELYN, September 23, 1890." As she read it, Evelyn remembered, what she had long forgotten, that this was what she had once said to Henrietta.

When she walked to the hotel, it was a bright, sunny afternoon, and snow was on the ground. She went to her room to take off her things, but she stood instead at the window, too intent on what she had heard to be capable of anything. Her heart was almost bursting to think that Henrietta should have treasured all these years the little love she had given her, crumbs, which she had as it were left over from her husband and boys, love not even for Henrietta's own sake, but for the sake of the dead children. She with all the riches of love poured on her, and Henrietta with so little. "I was cold, selfish, self-absorbed, I didn't think of her, I forgot her, I criticized her; it was all my fault."

But even at this moment of exaltation Evelyn realized that it was not her fault, but Henrietta's own; that it was because she was so unlovable that she was so little loved.

"But if she had had the chance she wouldn't have been unlovable. She was capable of greater love than any of us, and she never had the chance. If there is any justice and mercy in the world how can they allow a poor, weak human creature to have so few opportunities, such hard temptations, and when it yields to temptation to suffer so cruelly? And now I am to go back, and be happy with Herbert and the boys, and to feel quite truly that I did everything I could, _I can't bear it_."

She was so much filled with her thoughts that she had not observed the flight of time. She looked up, and was suddenly aware that the night had come, and that the sky was shining with innumerable stars. At the same moment she felt inextricably mingled with the stars, a rush of the most exquisite sensation, emotion, replenishment she had ever known. She felt through every fibre of her being that it was all perfectly well with Henrietta, and that the bitterness, aimlessness, and emptiness of her life was made up to her. This conviction was a thousand times more real to her than the room in which she was standing, more real than the stars, more real than herself. Tears of delight came raining down her cheeks, and she found that she was saying over and over again, "Darling, I am so glad"; poor childish words, but no more inadequate than the n.o.blest in the language to express her unspeakable comfort, beyond all utterance, even beyond thought. How often she said these words, or how long this bliss lasted she could not tell.

A strange dream-like remembrance of it stayed with her for some days.

She told her husband, and he said, "I am very glad of anything that can be a comfort to you, dearest;" but he looked at her anxiously, and thought it was a sign that she was to be ill again. However, she continued well and strong. She told no one else, but from henceforth she was perfectly happy about Henrietta.