1

Love and truth are the only things that count. I have often thought that they are like two rafts on the stormy sea of life, which otherwise would swamp and drown us struggling human beings. If we follow these two stars patiently, they will guide us at last into port. Love—the love of our kind—the undying love of a mother for her children—the love, so gloriously exhibited lately, of a soldier for his country—the eternal love between a man and a woman, which counts the world well lost—these are the clues through the wilderness. And Truth, the Truth which cries in the market-place with a loud voice and will not be hid, the Truth which sacrifices comfort, joy, even life itself, for the sake of a clear vision, the Truth which is far stranger than fiction—this is Love's very twin.

For Love's sake, then, and for Truth's, I am writing this account of a very sad and very dreadful period in the lives of those close and dear to me. I want to be very frank, and to hide nothing. I think, in my books, I am almost too frank sometimes; I give offence, and hurt people's egotism and vanity by speaking out; but it is the way I have to write; I cannot soften down facts to please. Just as I cannot restrain my sense of the ridiculous, even though it may offend those who take themselves solemnly; I am afraid I am naughty about such people, and often give offence; it is one of the penalties attached to the gift of humour. Percy often tells me I should be more careful; but my dear Percy's wonderful caution, that has helped to make him what he is, is a thing that no mere reckless woman can hope to emulate.

2

I am diverging from the point. I must begin with that dreadful evening of the 4th of September last. Clare was dining with a friend in town, and stopping at Jane's house in Hampstead for the night. Percy and I were spending a quiet evening at our house at Potter's Bar. We were both busy after dinner; he was in his study, and I was in my den, as I call it, writing another instalment of 'Rhoda's Gift' for the Evening Hustle, I find I write my best after dinner; my brain gets almost feverishly stimulated. My doctor tells me I ought not to work late, it is not fair on my nerves, but I think every writer has to live more or less on his or her nervous capital, it is the way of the reckless, squandering, thriftless tribe we are.

Laying down my pen at 10.45 after completing my chapter, the telephone bell suddenly rang. The maids had gone up to bed, so I went into the hall to take the call, or to put it through to Percy's study, for the late calls are usually, of course, for him, from one of the offices. But it was not for him. It was Jane's voice speaking.

'Is that you, mother?' she said, quite quietly and steadily. 'There's been an accident. Oliver fell downstairs. He fell backwards and broke his neck. He died soon after the doctor came.'

The self-control, the quiet pluck of these modern girls! Her voice hardly shook as she uttered the terrible words.

I sat down, trembling all over, and the tears rushed to my eyes. My darling child, and her dear husband, cut off at the very outset of their mutual happiness, and in this awful way! Those stairs—I always hated them; they are so steep and narrow, and wind so sharply round a corner.

'Oh, my darling,' I said. 'And the last train gone, so that I can't be with you till the morning! Is Clare there?'

'Yes,' said Jane. 'She's lying down…. She fainted.'

My poor darling Clare! So highly-strung, so delicate-fibred, far more like me than Jane is! And I always had a suspicion that her feeling for dear Oliver went very deep—deeper, possibly, than any of us ever guessed. For, there is no doubt about it, poor Oliver did woo Clare; if he wasn't in love with her he was very near it, before he went off at a tangent after Jane, who was something new, and therefore attractive to him, besides being thrown so much together in Paris when Jane was working for her father. The dear child has put up a brave fight ever since the engagement, and her self-control has been wonderful, but she has not been her old self. If it had not been for the unfortunate European conditions, I should have sent her abroad for a thorough change. It was terrible for her to be on the spot when this awful accident happened.

'My dear, dear child,' I said, hardly able to speak, my voice shook so with crying. 'I've no words…. Have you rung up Frank and Johnny? I should like Frank to be with you to-night; I know he would wish it.'

'No,' said Jane. 'It's no use bothering them till to-morrow. They can't do anything. Is daddy at home?… You'll tell him, then…. Good-night.'

'Oh, my darling, you mustn't ring off yet, indeed you mustn't. Hold on while I tell daddy; he would hate not to speak to you at once about it.'

'No, he won't need to speak to me. He'll have to get on to the Haste at once, and arrange a lot of things. I can keep till the morning. Good-night, mother.'

She rang off. There is something terrible to me about telephone conversations, when they deal with intimate or tragic subjects; they are so remote, cold, impersonal, like typed letters; is it because one can't watch the soul in the eyes of the person one is talking to?

3

I went straight to Percy. He was sitting at his writing table going through papers. At his side was the black coffee that he always sipped through the evenings, simmering over a spirit lamp. Percy will never go up to bed until the small hours; I suppose it is his newspaper training. If he isn't working, he will sit and read, or sometimes play patience, and always sip strong coffee, though his doctor has told him he should give it up. But he is like me; he lives on his nervous energy, reckless of consequences. He spends himself, and is spent, in the service of his great press. It was fortunate for him, though I suppose I ought not to say it, that he married a woman who is also the slave of literature, though of a more imaginative branch of literature, and who can understand him. But then that was inevitable; he could never have cared for a materialistic woman, or a merely domestic woman. He demanded ideas in the woman to whom he gave himself.

I could hardly bear to tell him the dreadful news. I knew how overcome he would be, because he was so fond of dear Oliver, who was one of his right hands, as well as a dear son-in-law. And he had always loved Jane with a peculiar pride and affection, devoted father as he was to all his children, for he said she had the best brain of the lot. And Oliver had been doing so well on the Daily Haste. Percy had often said he was an editor after his own heart; he had so much flair. When Percy said some one had flair, it was the highest praise he could give. He always told me I had flair, and that was why he was so eager to put my stories in his papers. I remember his remark when that dreadful man, Arthur Gideon, said in some review or other (I dislike his reviews, they are so conceited and cocksure, and show often such bad taste), 'Flair and genius are incompatible.' Percy said simply, 'Flair is genius.' I thought it extraordinarily true. But whether I have flair or not, I don't know. I don't think I ever bother about what the public want, or what will sell. I just write what comes natural to me; if people like it, so much the better; if they don't, they must bear it! But I will say that they usually do! No, I don't think I have flair; I think I have, instead, a message; or many messages.

But I had to break it to Percy. I put my arms round him and told him, quite simply. He was quite broken up by it. But, of course, the first thing he had to do was to get on to the Haste and let them know. He told them he would be up in the morning to make arrangements.

Then he sat and thought, and worked out plans in his head, in the concentrated, abstracted way he has, telephoning sometimes, writing notes sometimes, almost forgetting my presence. I love to be at the centre of the brain of the Pinkerton press at the moments when it is working at top speed like this. Cup after cup of strong black coffee he drank, hardly noticing it, till I remonstrated, and then he said absently, 'Very well, dear, very well,' and drank more. When I tried to persuade him to come up to bed, he said, 'No, no; I have things to think out. I shall be late. Leave me, my dear. Go to bed yourself, you need rest.' Then he turned from the newspaper owner to the father, and sighed heavily, and said, 'Poor little Janie. Poor dear little Babs. Well, well, well.'

4

I left him and went upstairs, knowing I must get all the strength I could before to-morrow.

My poor little girl a widow! I could hardly realise it. And yet, alas, how many young widows we have among us in these days! Only they are widowed for a noble cause, not by a horrid accident on the stairs. Poor Oliver, of course, had exemption from military service; he never even had to go before the tribunal for it, but had it direct from the War Office, like nearly all Percy's staff, who were recognised by the Government as doing more important work at home than they could have done at the front. I have a horror of the men who evaded service during the war, but men like Oliver Hobart, who would have preferred to be fighting but stayed to do invaluable work for their country, one must respect. And it seemed very bitter that Oliver, who hadn't fallen in the war, should have fallen now down his own stairs. Poor, poor Oliver! As I lay in bed, unable to sleep, I saw his beautiful face before me. He was quite the most beautiful man I have ever known. I have given his personal appearance to the hero of one of my novels, Sidney, a Man. It was terrible to me to think of that beauty lost from the world. Whatever view one may take of another world (and personally, far as I am from any orthodox view on the subject, my spiritual investigations have convinced me that there is, there must be, a life to come; I have had the most wonderful experiences, that may not be denied) physical beauty, one must believe, is a phenomenon of this physical universe, and must perish with the body. Unless, as some thinkers have conceived, the immortal soul wraps itself about in some aural vapour that takes the form it wore on earth. This is a possibility, and I would gladly believe it. I must, I decided, try to bring my poor Jane into touch with psychic interests; it would comfort her to have the wonderful chance of getting into communication with Oliver. At present she scouts the whole thing, like all other forms of supernatural belief. Jane has always been a materialist. It is very strange to me that my children have developed, intellectually and spiritually, along such different lines from myself. I have never been orthodox; I am not even now an orthodox theosophist; I am not of the stuff which can fall into line and accept things from others; it seems as if I must always think for myself, delve painfully, with blood and tears, for Truth. But I have always been profoundly religious; the spiritual side of life has always meant a very great deal to me; I think I feel almost too intensely the vibration of Spirit in the world of things. I probe, and wonder, and cannot let it alone, like most people, and be content with surfaces. Of late years, and especially since I took up theosophy, I have found great joy and comfort from my association with the S.P.R. I am in touch with several very wonderful thought-readers, crystal-gazers, mediums, and planchette writers, who have often strangely illumined the dark places of life for me. To those who mock and doubt, I merely say, 'try.' Or else I cite, not 'Raymond' nor Conan Doyle, but that strange, interesting, scientific book by a Belfast professor, who made experiments in weighing the tables before and after they levitated, and weighing the mediums, and finding them all lighter. I think that was it; anyhow it is all, to any open mind, entirely convincing that something had occurred out of the normal, which is what Percy and the twins never will believe. When I say 'try' to Percy, he only answers, 'I should fail, my dear. I may, as I have been called, be a superman, but I am not a superwoman, and cannot call up spirits.' And the children are hopeless about it, too. Frank says we are not intended to 'lift the curtain' (that is what he calls it). He is such a thorough clergyman, and never had my imagination; he calls my explorations 'dabbling in the occult.' His wife jeers, and asks me if I've been talking to many spooks lately. But then her family are hard-headed business people, quite different from me. Clare says the whole thing frightens her to death. For her part she is content with what the Church allows of spiritual exploration, which is not much. Clare, since what I am afraid I must call her trouble, has been getting much Higher Church; incense and ritual seem to comfort her. I know the phase; I went through it twenty years ago, when my baby Michael died and the world seemed at an end. But I came out the other side; it couldn't last for me, I had to have much more. Clare may remain content with it; she has not got my perhaps too intense instinct for groping always after further light. And I am thankful that she should find comfort and help anywhere. Only I rather hope she will never join the Roman Church; its banks are too narrow to hold the brimming river of the human spirit—even my Clare's, which does not, perhaps, brim very high, dear, simple child that she is.

As for the twins, they are merely cynical about all experiments with the supernatural. I often feel that if my little Michael had lived…. But, in a way, I am thankful to have him on the other side, reaching his baby hands across to me in the way he so often does.

That night I determined I would make a great effort to bring Jane into the circle of light, as I love to call it. She would find such comfort there, if only it could be. But I knew it would be difficult; Jane is so hard-headed, and, for all her cleverness in writing, has so little imagination really. She said that Raymond made her sick. And she wouldn't look at Rupert Lives! or Across the Stream, E.F. Benson's latest novel about the other side. She quite frankly doesn't believe there is another side. I remember her saying to me once, in her school-girl slang, when she was seventeen or so, 'Well, I'd like to think I went on, mother; I think it's simply rotten pipping out. I like being alive, and I'd like to have tons more of it—but there it is, I can't believe anything so weird and it's no use trying. And if I don't pip out after all, it'll be such a jolly old surprise and lark that I shall be glad I couldn't believe in it here.' Johnny, I remember, said to her (those two were always ragging each other), 'Ah, you may be wishing you only could pip out, then….' But I told him that I wished he wouldn't, even in joke, allude to that bogey of the nurseries of my generation, a place of punishment. That terrible old teaching! Thank God we are outgrowing much of it. I must say that the descriptions They give, when They give any, of Their place of being, do not sound very cheerful—but it cannot at all resemble the old-fashioned place of torment, it sounds so much less clear-cut and definite than that, more like London in a yellow fog.

5

I do not think I slept that night. I am bad at sleeping when I have had a shock. My idiotic nerves again. Crane, in his book, Right and Wrong Thinking, says one should drop discordant thoughts out of one's mind as one drops a pebble out of one's hand. But my interior calm is not yet sufficient for this exercise, and I confess I am all too easily shaken to pieces by trouble, especially the troubles of those I love.

I felt a wreck when I met Percy at an early breakfast next morning. He, too, looked jaded and strained, and ate hardly any breakfast, only a little force and three cups of strong tea—an inadequate meal, as I told him, upon which to face so trying a day. For we had to have strength not only for ourselves but for our children. Giving out: it is so much harder work than taking in, and it is the work for us older people always.

Percy passed me the Haste, pointing to a column on the front page. That had been part of his business last night, to see that the Haste had a good column about it. The news editor had turned out a column about a Bolshevik advance on the Dvina to make room for it, and it was side by side with the Rectory Oil Mystery, the German Invasion (dumped goods, of course), the Glasgow Trades' Union Congress, the French Protest about Syria, Woman's Mysterious Disappearance, and a Tarring and Feathering Court Martial. The heading was 'Tragic Death of the Editor of the Daily Haste,' and there followed not only a full report of the disaster, but an account of Oliver's career, with one of those newspaper photographs which do the original so little justice.

'Binney's been pretty sharp about it,' said Percy approvingly. 'Of course, he had all the biographical facts stored.'

6

We went up by the 9.24, and went straight to Hampstead.

Quietly and sadly we entered that house of death. The maid, all flustered and red-eyed with emotional unrest, told us that Jane was upstairs, and Clare too. We went up the narrow stairs, now become so tragic in their associations. On which step, I wondered, had he fallen, and how far?

Jane came out of the drawing-room to meet us. She was pale, and looked as if she hadn't slept, but composed, as she always is. I took her in my arms and gave her a long kiss. Then her father kissed her, and smoothed her hair, and patted her head as he used to do when she was a child, and said, 'There, there, there, my poor little Babs. There, there, there.'

I led her into the drawing-room. I felt her calm was unnatural. 'Cry, my darling,' I said. 'Have your cry out, and you will feel better.'

'Shall I?' she said. 'I don't think so, mother. Crying doesn't make me feel better, ever. It makes my head ache.'

I thought of Tennyson's young war widow and the nurse of ninety years, and only wished it could have been six months later, so that I could have set Jane's child upon her knee.

'When you feel you can, my darling,' I said, wiping my eyes, 'you must tell me all about it. But not before you want to.'

'There isn't much to tell,' she answered quietly, still without tears.
'He fell down the stairs backwards. That's all.'

'Did you … see him, darling?'

She hesitated a moment, then said 'Yes. I saw him. I was in here. He'd just come in from the office…. He lost his balance.'

'Would you feel up, my dear,' said her father, 'to giving me an account of it, that I could put in the papers?'

'You can put that in the papers, daddy. That's all there is to say about it, I'm afraid…. I've had seventeen reporters round this morning already, and I told Emily to tell them that. That's probably another,' she added, as the bell rang.

But it was not. Emily came up a moment later and asked if Jane could see
Mr. Gideon.

It showed the over-wrought state of Jane's nerves that she started a little. She never starts or shows surprise. Besides, what could be more natural than that Mr. Gideon, who, disagreeable man though he is, is a close friend of hers (far too close, I always thought, considering that Oliver was on almost openly bad terms with him) should call to inquire, on seeing the dreadful news? It would, all the same, I thought, have been better taste on his part to have contented himself with leaving kind inquiries at the door. However, of course, one would never expect him to do the right-minded or well-bred thing on any occasion.

'I'll go down,' Jane said quietly. 'Will you wait there?' she added to her father and me. 'You might,' she called from the stairs, 'go and see Clare. She's in her room.'

I crossed the passage to the spare bedroom, and as I did so I caught a glimpse of that man's tall, rather stooping figure in the hall, and heard Jane say, rather low, 'Arthur!' and add quickly, 'Mother and dad are upstairs. Come in here.'

Then they disappeared into the dining-room, which was on the ground floor, and shut the door after them.

7

I went in to Clare. She was sitting in an armchair by the window. When she turned her face to me, I recoiled in momentary shock. Her poor, pretty little face was pinched and feverishly flushed; her brown eyes stared at me as if she was seeing ghosts. Her hands were locked together on her knees, and she was huddled and shivering, though it was a warm morning. I had known she would feel the shock terribly, but I had hardly been prepared for this. I was seriously afraid she was going to be ill.

I knelt down beside her and drew her into my arms, where she lay passive, seeming hardly to realise me.

'My poor little girl,' I murmured. 'Cry, darling. Cry, and you will feel better.'

Clare was always more obedient than Jane. She did cry. She broke suddenly into the most terrible passion of tears. I tried to hold her, but she pulled away from me and laid her head upon her arms and sobbed.

I stayed beside her and comforted her as best I could, and finally went to Jane's medicine cupboard and mixed her a dose of sal volatile.

When she was a little quieter, I said, 'Tell me nothing more than you feel inclined to, darling. But if it would make you happier to talk to me about it, do.'

'I c-can't talk about it,' she sobbed.

'My poor pet!… Did it happen after you got here, or before?'

I felt her stiffen and grow tense, as at a dreadful memory.

'After…. But I was in my room; I wasn't there.'

'You heard the fall, I suppose….'

She shuddered, and nodded.

'And you came out….' I helped her gently, 'as Jane did, and found him….'

She burst out crying afresh. I almost wished I had not suggested this outlet for her horror and grief.

'Don't, mother,' she sobbed. 'I can't talk about it—I can't.'

'My pet, of course you can't, and you shan't. It was thoughtless of me to think that speech would be a relief. Lie down on your bed, dear, and have a good rest, and you will feel better presently.'

But she opposed that too.

'I can't stay here. I want to go home at once. At once, mother.'

'My dearest child, you must wait for me. I can't let you go alone in this state, and I can't, of course, go myself until Jane is ready to come with me.'

'I'm going,' she repeated. 'I can go alone. I'm going now, at once.'

And she began feverishly cramming her things into her suit-case.

I was anxious about her, but I did not like to thwart her in her present mood. Then I heard Frank's voice in the drawing-room, and I thought I would get him to accompany her, at least to the station. Frank and Clare have always been fond of one another, and she has a special reliance on clergymen.

I went into the drawing-room, and found Frank and Johnny both there, with
Jane and Percy. So that dreadful Jew must have gone.

I told Frank that Clare was in a terrible state, and entrusted her to his care. Frank is a good unselfish brother, and he went to look after her.

Johnny, silent and troubled, and looking as if death was out of his line, though, Heaven knows, he had seen enough of it during the last five years, was fidgeting awkwardly about the room. His awkwardness was, no doubt, partly due to the fact that he had never much cared for Oliver. This does make things awkward, in the presence of the Great Silencer.

Percy had to leave us now, in order to go to the Haste and see about things there. He said he would be back in the afternoon. He would, of course, take over the business of making the last sad arrangements, which Jane called, rather crudely, 'seeing about the funeral'; the twins would always call spades 'spades.'

Presently I made the suggestion which I had for some time had in my mind.

'May I, dear?' I asked very softly, half rising.

Jane rose, too.

'See Oliver, you mean? Oh, yes. He's in his room.'

I motioned her back. 'Not you, darling. Johnny will take me.'

Johnny didn't want to much, I think; it is the sort of strain on the emotions that he dislikes, but he came with me.

8

What had been Oliver lay on the bed, stretched straight out, the beautiful face as white and delicate as if modelled in wax. One saw no marks of injury; except for that waxy pallor he might have been sleeping.

In the presence of the Great White Silence I bowed my head and wept. He was so beautiful, and had been so alive. I said so to Johnny.

'He was so alive,' I said, 'so short a time ago.'

'Yes,' Johnny muttered, staring down at the bed, his hands in his pockets. 'Yesterday, of course. Rotten bad luck, poor old chap. Rotten way to get pipped.'

For a minute longer I kept my vigil beside that inanimate form.

'Peace, peace, he is not dead,' I repeated to myself. 'He sleeps whom men call dead…. The soul of Adonais, like a star, beckons from the abode where the eternal are.'

Death is wonderful to me; not a horrible thing, but holy and high. Here was the lovely mortal shell, for which 'arrangements' had to be made; but the spirit which had informed it was—where? In what place, under what conditions, would Oliver Hobart now fulfil himself, now carry on the work so faithfully begun on earth? What word would he be able to send us from that Place of Being? Time would (I hoped) show.

As we stood there in the shadow of the Great Mystery, I heard Frank talking to Clare, whose room was next door.

'It is wrong to give way…. One must not grieve for the dead as if one would recall them. We know—you and I know, don't we, Clare—that they are happier where they are. And we know too, that it is God's will, and that He decides everything for the best. We must not rebel against it…. If you really want to catch the 12.4 to Potter's Bar, we ought to start now.'

Conventional phraseology! It would never have been adequate for me; I am afraid I have an incurable habit of rebelling against the orthodox dogma beloved of clergymen, but Clare is more docile, less 'tameless and swift and proud.'

I touched Johnny's arm. 'Let us come away,' I murmured.

Clare, her face beneath her veil swollen with crying, went off with Frank, who was going to see her into the train. I, of course, was going to stop with Jane until the funeral, as she called it; I would not leave her alone in the house. So I asked Frank if Peggy would go down to Potter's Bar and be with Clare, who was certainly not fit for solitude, poor child, until my return. Peggy is a dear, cheerful girl, if limited, and she and Clare have always been great friends. Frank said he was sure Peggy would do this, and I went back to Jane, who was writing necessary letters in the drawing-room.

Johnny said to her, 'Well, if you're sure I can't be any use just now, old thing, I suppose I ought to go to the office,' and Jane said, 'Yes, don't stay. There's nothing,' and he went.

I offered to help Jane with the letters, but she said she could easily manage them, and I thought the occupation might be the best thing for her, so I left her to it and went down to speak to Emily, Jane's nice little maid. Emily is a good little thing, and she was obviously terribly, though not altogether unpleasantly, shocked and stirred (maids are) by the tragedy.

She told me much more about the terrible evening than Jane or Clare had. It was less effort, of course, for her to speak. Indeed, I think she really enjoyed opening out to me. And I liked to hear. I always must get a clear picture of events: I suppose it is the story-writer's instinct.

'I went up to bed, my lady,' she said, 'feeling a bit lonely now cook's on her holiday, soon after Miss Clare came in. And I was just off to sleep when I heard Mrs. Hobart come in, with Mr. Gideon; they were talking as they came up to the drawing-room, and that woke me up.'

'Mr. Gideon!' I exclaimed in surprise. 'Was he there?'

'Yes, my lady. He came in with Mrs. Hobart. I knew it was him, by his voice. And soon after the master came in, and they was all talking together. And then I heard the mistress come upstairs to her bedroom. And then I dozed off, and I was woke by the fall…. Oh, dear, my lady, how I did scream when I came down and saw…. There was the poor master laying on the bottom stair, stunned-like, as I thought, I'm sure I never knew he was gone, and the mistress and Miss Clare bending over him, and the mistress calling to me to telephone for the doctor. The poor mistress, she was so white, I thought she'd go off, but she kept up wonderful; and Miss Clare, she was worse, all scared and white, as if she'd seen a ghost. I rang for Dr. Armes, and he came round at once, and I got hot-water bottles and put them in the bed, but the doctor wouldn't move him for a bit, he examined him where he lay, and he found the back was broke. He told the mistress straight out. "His back's broke," he said. "There's no hope," he said. "It may be a few hours, or less," he said. Then he sent for a mattress and we laid the master on it, down in the hall, and put hot-water bottles to his feet, and then the mistress said I'd better go back to bed; but, oh, dear, I couldn't do that, so I just waited in the kitchen and got a kettle boiling in case the mistress and Miss Clare would like a cup of tea, and I had a cup myself, my lady, for I was all of a didder, and nothing pulls you round like a drop of hot tea. Then I took two cups out into the hall for the mistress and Miss Clare, and when I got there the doctor was saying, "It's all over," and, dear me, so it was, so I took the tea back to keep it hot against they were ready for it, for I couldn't speak to them of tea just at first, could I, my lady? Then the doctor called me, and there was Miss Clare laying in a fit, and he was bringing her round. He told me to help her to her room, and so I did, and she seemed half stunned-like, and didn't say a word, but dropped on her bed like a stone. Then I had to help the doctor and the mistress carry the poor master on the mattress up to his room, and lay him on his bed; and the doctor saw to Miss Clare a little, then he went away and said he'd send round a woman for the laying out…. Poor Miss Clare, I was sorry for her. Laid like a stone, she did, as white as milk. She's such a one to feel, isn't she, my lady? And to hear the fall and run out and find him like that! The poor master! Them stairs, I always hated them. The back stairs are bad enough, when I have to carry the hot water up and down, but they don't turn so sharp. The poor master, he must have stumbled backwards, the light not being good, and fallen clean over. And it isn't as if he was like some gentlemen, that might have had a drop at dinner; no one ever saw the master the worse, did they, my lady? I'm sure cook and me and every one always thought him such a nice, good gentleman. I don't know what cook will say when she hears, I'm sure I don't.'

'It is indeed all very terrible and sad, Emily,' I said to her. I left her then, and went up to the drawing-room.

Jane was sitting at the writing table, her pen in one hand, her forehead resting on the other.

'My dear,' I said to her, 'Emily has been giving me some account of last night. She tells me that Mr. Gideon was here.'

'She's quite right,' said Jane listlessly. 'I met him at Katherine's, and he saw me home and came in for a little.'

I was silent for a moment. It seemed to me rather sad that Jane should have this memory of her husband's last evening on this earth, for she knew that Oliver had not liked her to see much of Mr. Gideon. I understood why she had been loath to mention it to me.

'And had he gone,' I asked her softly, 'when … It … happened?'

Jane frowned, in the way the twins always frown when people put things less bluntly and crudely than they think fit. For some reason they call this, the regard for the ordinary niceties of life, by the foolish name of 'Potterism.'

'When Oliver fell?' she corrected me, still in that quiet, listless, almost indifferent tone. 'Oh, yes. He wasn't here long.'

'Well, well,' I said very gently, 'we must let bygones be bygones, and not grieve over much. Grief,' I added, wanting so much that the child should rise to the opportunity and take her trial in a large spirit, 'is such a big, strong, beautiful thing. If we let it, it will take us by the hands and lead us gently along by the waters of comfort. We mustn't rebel or fight; we must look straight ahead with welcoming eyes. For whatever life brings us we can use.'

Jane still sat very still at the writing table, her head on her hand, her fingers pushing back her hair from her forehead. I thought she sighed a little, a long sigh of acquiescence which touched me.

This seemed to me to be the moment to speak to her of what was in my mind.

'And, my dear,' I said, 'there is another thing. We mustn't think that
Oliver has gone down into silence. You must help him to speak to you, a
little later, when you are fit and when he has found his way to the
Door. You mustn't shut him out, my child.'

'Mother,' said Jane, 'you know I don't believe in any of that.'

'I only ask you to try,' I said earnestly. 'Don't bolt and bar the Door…. I shall try, my dear, for you, if you will not, and he shall communicate with you through me.'

'I shan't believe it,' said Jane, stating not a resolve but a fact, 'if he does. Of course, do what you like about all that, mother, I don't care. But, if you don't mind, I'd rather not hear about it.'

I decided to put off any further discussion of the question, particularly as the child looked and must have been tired out.

I went down to the kitchen to talk to Emily about Jane's lunch. I felt that she ought to have a beaten egg, and perhaps a little fish.

But I wished that she had told me frankly about that man Gideon's visit last night. Jane was always so reserved.