AUNTS

Till Miss Garver had seen Harry and James tucked away in their beds again and had put out the light and left their room, both the boys maintained the same outward composure that they had shown throughout the experiences of the night. But once left alone in the quiet of their darkened bedroom, no further ordeal ahead of them to inspire restraint—for they knew perfectly well by this time that their mother must be dead—they gave way entirely to their natural grief and spent what they both remembered afterward as the wretchedest night of their lives.

It was scarcely better when Miss Garver woke them in the morning, though sleep had so completely erased all recollection of the night before that Harry, lazily sitting up and rubbing his eyes, asked what time it was in the most natural voice in the world.

"About ten o'clock," was the reply.

"Ten o'clock! Why, we're an hour late for school already."

"You are not going to school to-day," answered Miss Garver, gently, and she hated to say it, knowing that the remark would immediately set them remembering. When she turned toward them again she saw that it had, indeed.

"Listen," she told them, as gently as she could, "I want you both to get dressed now as quickly as possible and then go down and eat your breakfast. After that I am going to take you both down town. There is a good deal to be done. So hurry up."

"Why are you going to take us down town?" asked James.

"To get some clothes."

"But I don't understand," he began again, and then he did. He started dressing, mechanically, and had half completed his toilet before he noticed his brother, who was kneeling despairingly by his bed, with his face buried in the pillow.

"Come on, Harry," he said gently; "I'm nearly ready."

"No," moaned Harry.

"Yes. It's got to be done, you know."

"Oh, go away and leave me alone."

James bent his head down close to that of his brother. "You feel better when you're doing something," he said softly.

Harry, at length persuaded, arose and began to dress, and before long he began to feel that James was right. Doing something did not remove the pain, or even ease it, but it made you notice it less. It was even better during breakfast. Both the boys ate steadily and fairly copiously, though their enjoyment, if there was any, of what was customarily their pleasantest meal, was wholly subconscious. There was honey on the table, and Harry, without realizing what he was doing, helped himself to it for a second time. He mechanically pushed the pot back toward James, who also partook. Almost simultaneously their teeth closed on honey and muffin, and at the same time their eyes met. For two or three seconds they gazed shamefacedly at each other, and then stopped eating. Harry left the table and stood in front of the window, looking out over the wide lawn.

"Oh, Mother, Mother," he cried within himself; "to think I should be eating honey and muffin, now, so soon, and enjoying it! Oh, forgive me, forgive me!"

When the first shock of self-contempt had passed off, the boys wandered into the library, in search of their father. They discovered him, seated at his desk as they had expected, but it was with a sharp shock of surprise that they perceived that he was interviewing the cook. Both were more or less disgusted at the discovery, but they felt nevertheless, in a vague but reassuring way, that this partly justified the honey episode.

The interview closed almost as soon as they entered, and their father called them over to him.

"You have both been very good," he said, taking a hand of each of them; "this has all been very hard for you, I know." He paused, and then, seeing signs of tears on their faces, he went on somewhat hurriedly: "You must go down town with Miss Garver now; she has very kindly offered to get you what you will need for the funeral. Aunt Cecilia will take you to New York after that, I expect, and will fit you out more fully. The funeral will be to-morrow at three o'clock, and you will be on hand for that. I don't know whether any one told you; the baby died—the one that was born last night. It was a little girl; she only lived a few minutes. She will be buried with your mother. There will be a lot of people coming up to-day and to-morrow for the funeral; Uncle James and Aunt Cecilia and various others, and as there is a good deal to arrange you must try to be a help and not a hindrance, and make yourselves useful if you can. Now run along with Miss Garver and—oh, one more thing. I should advise you not to ask to see your mother again. You can, of course, if you want to, but I rather think you will not be sorry if you don't. You see, you probably have a good many years in which you will have to live on her memory, and I think it will be better if your last recollection of her is as she was when she was alive, not when she was dead ... and if you want to drive down to the station after lunch to meet Uncle James and Aunt Cecilia on the two-fifty, you can. You'd better do that; it's a good thing to give yourself plenty of occupation. That's all—good-by."

Then they went off in search of black clothes, and somewhat to their surprise they noticed that Miss Garver had returned to her companionable self of the preceding days; it was almost as if their mother had not died, except that she was gravely cheerful now, instead of cheerfully cheerful, as before.

Before long the boys noticed that almost every one they had to do with adopted the attitude taken by Miss Garver. Lunch, to be sure, was a rather terrible meal, for then they were alone with their father, and he, though he refrained from further allusion to the loss that hung over them all, was silent and preoccupied. But Uncle James and Aunt Cecilia, when met at the station by their nephews, spoke and acted much as usual, and neither of them noticed that Aunt Cecilia's gentle eyes filled with tears as she kissed them. They had always loved Aunt Cecilia best of all their aunts, though she was not their real aunt, being the wife of their father's younger brother. Of their Uncle James the boys were both a little afraid, and never felt they understood him. He was much like their father, both in behavior and appearance—though he was clean-shaven and their father wore a beard and mustache—but he was much more unapproachable. He had an uncomfortable way of suddenly joining in a conversation with an apparently irrelevant remark, at which everybody would generally remain silent for a moment and then laugh, while he sat with grave and unchanged countenance. The boys had once spoken to their father of their uncle's apparent lack of sympathy; Harry had complained that Uncle James never seemed to "have any feelings." "Well," replied their father, "he is a better lawyer than I am," and the boys never saw any sense in that reply till they remembered it years afterward, and even then they never could decide whether it was meant as an explanation or a corollary.

Later in the afternoon Aunt Selina arrived. There was always something magnificent and aloof about Aunt Selina; she had the air of having been transplanted out of a glorious past into a frivolous and inferior present, and being far too well-bred to comment on its inferiority, however keenly she was aware of it. She was the half-sister of Hilary Wimbourne, and much older than he, being the child of a first marriage of his father. Harry and James were on the front steps to greet her as she drove up in state. Her very manner of stepping out of the carriage and ascending the steps where she gravely bent and kissed each of her nephews with the same greeting—"How do you do, my dear James," "How do you do, my dear Harry,"—was not so much a tribute to the gravity of this particular occasion as a typical instance of Aunt Selina's way of doing things. Though only of average height, she generally gave the impression of being tall by the erect way in which she habitually carried her head, and by the straightness and spareness of her whole figure. Her skirts always nobly swept the floor beside and behind her, in a day when other women's skirts hung limply about their ankles. Both Harry and James looked upon her with an awe which was only slightly modified by affection.

But both boys' views of Aunt Selina underwent expansion within the next twenty-four hours, and they were to learn the interesting lesson that a warm and impulsive heart may be hidden within a forbidding exterior. Aunt Selina entered the home of the Wimbournes with her customary quiet ceremony, and gravely greeted such of her relatives as were present, after which every one else in the room instinctively "stood around," waiting for her to make the first move. Kind and gentle Aunt Cecilia, who was a daughter of one of New York's oldest and proudest and richest families, was no one in particular while Aunt Selina was in the room. Miss Wimbourne immediately proceeded to her bedroom, to repair the ravages of travel, and when she came down again she found the drawing-room deserted except for James, who was standing in front of a window and gazing out into the twilight. She went over and stood by him, also looking over the darkening lawn.

"I am very glad to get this chance to see you, James," she said presently, in her subdued, measured tones, "even though the occasion for my being here is such a sad one. It is not often I get a chance to see any of my nephews and nieces."

James mumbled an inarticulate monosyllable or two in reply, without turning his head. Aunt Selina had interrupted what was a bad half-hour for James. She turned and looked at him, and the look of dumb suffering on his face struck into the very roots of her heart. She stooped suddenly and put her arms about him, kissing his cheek with a warmth that was entirely new to James.

"I know how it feels," she whispered; "I've been through it all, not once, but again and again, and I know just how bad it is. Dear boy, how I wish I could bear it for you."

She sat down on a little settee that stood in front of the window, still holding one of James' hands in hers, and the boy, after the first shock of astonishment had passed, sank down on his knees in front of her and buried his head in her lap. So he remained for some minutes, sobbing almost contentedly; it was sweet to find consolation in this unexpected quarter.

Presently he raised his miserable eyes to hers. "It's Harry, too—partly—" he said, and could go no further.

"Yes, I know that too," said his aunt. "You mean that you have to bear up on Harry's account—"

"Yes!"

"Because you are older and stronger than he, and you know he would suffer more if you let him see how much you suffer. So you go about with the pain burning your very heart out, because all the time something in his face makes it impossible for you to breathe a word more of it than you can help. And so every one gets the idea you are more hard-hearted than he," she went on passionately, letting her voice sink to a whisper, "and are not capable of as much feeling as he. But you don't care what people think; you don't know or care about anything except oh! if you only might go somewhere and shriek it all out to somebody, anybody! And after a lifetime of that sort of thing self-repression becomes second nature to you, so that you can't say a thing you think or feel, and you become the sort of living mummy that I am, with your soul dead and embalmed years ago, while your body, your worthless, useless body, goes on living and living. You have begun it early, my poor James!"

She stopped, quite as much astounded at her own outburst as James. The boy no longer cried, for astonishment had driven away his tears, but stared thoughtfully out of the window. He had not caught the full meaning of all that his aunt had said, but he knew that he was receiving a most important confidence from the most unexpected possible quarter, which was exactly in tune with his own mood. The good lady herself was for a few moments literally too bewildered to utter a word.

"Good Heavens!" ran her astonished thoughts, "do you know what you have done, Selina Wimbourne? You have made more of a fool of yourself in the last five minutes than you have done in all the years since you were a girl! God grant it may do him no harm."

To James she said aloud, as soon as she could control her voice:

"I am a foolish and indiscreet old woman, James—"

"No, you're not," interrupts the boy with sudden spirit.

"Well, I've said a great deal more than I ought, at any rate. I don't want you to get any false impression from what I have told you. I want to explain to you that all the suffering I have undergone from—in the way I have told you—has not hurt me, but has rather benefited me. You see, there are two kinds of human suffering. One is forced upon you from the outside. You can't prevent that kind, you just have to go through with it. It never is as bad as you think it is going to be, I find. The other kind you make for yourself, by doing the wrong thing when you know you ought to be doing the right thing. That is the really bad kind of suffering, and you can always prevent it by doing the thing you know is right."

"You mean," said James thoughtfully, "that it would have been even worse for you if you had squealed, when you knew—when you knew you ought not to!"

"Exactly. It's simply a question of the lesser of two evils. Doing the pleasant but wrong thing hurts more in the end than doing the disagreeable but right thing."

"I see. But suppose you can't tell which is the right thing and which the wrong one?"

"Ah, there you've put your finger on a real difficulty. You just have to think it all over and decide as best you can, and then, if it turns out wrong, you're not so much to blame. Then, your suffering is of the kind that you can't help. No one can do any better than what he thinks is right at the time.... Now get up, dear, I hear people coming."

"Well, thank you, Aunt Selina. What you have told me helps, an awful lot. Really!"

"I am glad, my dear," replied Miss Wimbourne, and when people entered the room a second or two later no one suspected the sudden bond of sympathy that had sprung up between the specimens of crabbed age and youth they found there.

"Cecilia, what's going to become of those two boys?" inquired Miss Wimbourne later in the evening, finding herself for the moment alone with her sister-in-law.

"I've been asking myself that question pretty steadily for the last twelve hours," answered Mrs. James. "I wish I could take them," she added, impulsively.

"Hardly, I suppose." If any of the remarks made in this conversation seem abrupt or inconsequent, it must be remembered that these two ladies understood each other pretty thoroughly without having to polish off or even finish their sentences, or even to make them consecutive.

"Unfortunately," went on Mrs. James, after a brief pause, "the whole thing depends entirely upon Hilary."

"The very last person—"

"Exactly. Yet what can one do?"

"It seems quite clear to me," said Aunt Selina, choosing her words carefully and slowly, "that Hilary will inevitably choose the one course which is most to be avoided. Hilary will want them to go on living here alone with him; preserve the status quo as far as possible. What do you think?"

"I am almost sure of it. But...."

"But if any of us have the slightest feeling for those boys ... Until they are both safely away at school, at any rate, and he won't send them away for a year or two yet, at any rate."

"Harry not for three, I should say.... That is, I shouldn't."

Silence for a moment, then Aunt Selina:

"Well, can you think of any one that could be got to come here?"

Mrs. James fluttered for a moment, as though preparing for a delicate and difficult advance.

"I wonder," she said, "that is, the thought struck me to-day—if you—if you could ever—"

"Hilary and I," observed Aunt Selina in calm, clear impersonal tones that once for all disposed of the suggestion; "Hilary and I Do Not Get On. That way, I mean. At a distance—"

The sentence was completed by a gesture that somehow managed to convey an impression of understanding and amity at a distance. Mrs. James' subdued "Oh!" of comprehension, or rather of resignation, bid fair for a while to close the interview. But presently Aunt Selina, with the air of one accepting a sword offered with hilt toward her, asked, or rather observed, as though it was not a question at all, but a statement:

"What do you think of Agatha Fraile?"

"Well," replied Mrs. James with something of a burnt-child air; "I like her. Though I hardly know her, of course. I should say she would be willing, too. Though of course one can't tell.... They are not well off, I believe.... She is very good, no doubt...."

"Hm," said Aunt Selina serenely, aware that there was a conversational ditch to be taken, and determined to make her interlocutrix give her a lead. This Aunt Cecilia bravely did with:

"You mean—how much does she know about—?"

"About Hilary, yes."

"I rather think, myself, she must have found out through Edith.... I don't see how she could have failed to know. Do you?"

"I can't say, I'm sure. Edith had rather curious ideas, though she was one of the best women that ever lived. However, that is not the main point for consideration now. What I want to know is, can you think of anything better?"

"N-no," replied Mrs. James slowly. "I even think it would be the best possible arrangement, if—Oh dear, to think it should come to this—those poor boys!"

"Yes, I know," said Aunt Selina, briskly. "Now, that being decided, some one has got to put it to Hilary. Hilary will do nothing alone. She comes to-morrow morning, does she not? I think it should be settled, one way or the other, before she goes. Now who is to approach Hilary?"

"I don't know," faltered Mrs. James, rather bewildered by the other's swiftness of reasoning.

"Well, I do. James is the only human being I know who has, or ever had, any influence on Hilary. Now one of us has got to talk to James, and I rather think, Cecilia, that I could do it more successfully than you. For the first time, that is.... Of course, afterward, you...."

"Yes, of course," murmurs Mrs. James.

"Very well, then; I will see James the first thing in the morning. I don't say it will come to anything, but there is a great deal to be gone through before she is even approached. We must do something. Living here alone, with their father...."

"Out of the question, of course." The conversation having, as it were, completed one lap of its course and arrived again at its starting point, might have perambulated gently along till bedtime, had it not been abruptly interrupted by the entrance of James, junior, come to say good-night.

A few days after the funeral, after they had gone to bed of an evening, Harry through the darkness apostrophized his brother thus:

"I tell you, James, Aunt Selina is all right; did you know it?"

"Oh," was the reply, "she gave you five dollars, too, did she?"

"Yes, but that's not what I mean. She's given me five dollars plenty of times before this."

"Well, what do you mean, then?"

"Well, she found me in the garden one morning.... Tuesday, I guess—" Tuesday had been the day of the funeral—"and I had been crying a good deal, and I suppose she knew it. At any rate, she took me by the hand and talked to me for a while...."

"What did she say to you?" This question was not prompted by vulgar curiosity; James knew that his brother wished to be pumped.

"Oh, she didn't say much. She was just awfully nice, that's all.... She told me—well, she said, for one thing, that I cried too much. Only she didn't say it like that. She said that going about and crying wasn't much of a way of showing you were sorry. She said that if—well, if you really missed a person, the least you could do was not to go about making a pest of yourself, even if you couldn't really do anything to help."

"Oh."

"She said that the last thing that would please Mama herself was to think that all she had taught me came to no more than ... well, than crying. Then she said.... I don't think I'll tell you that, though."

"Well, don't, if you don't want to."

"She told me that, in a way, she realized I must feel it—about Mama—more than any one else, because I had been more with her lately than any one else—more dependent on her, she said, ..."

"Yes, I see."

"And that while it was harder on me, it put a greater responsibility on me, because, you see—oh, I can't explain it all! But she was about right, I guess."

"She told me something of the same kind ... not exactly like that, I mean, but—well, the same sort of thing. It helped, too. It's funny, to think of her understanding better than any one else—Aunt Selina!"

"Yes, isn't it? Well, you really never can tell about people." With which mature reflection Harry turned over and went to sleep. But his brother lay awake for some time thinking over what he had just heard, and as he thought, his respect for his aunt grew. Not only could she sound the depths of his own woe and give him comfort for it, but she could light on the one thing that would be likely to help Harry in his own peculiar need, and show it to him with ready and fearless tact. And what she had told Harry was practically the very opposite of what she had told him.

"I wish I could be like Aunt Selina," he thought.