An old lady, in a high drawing-room, had had her chair moved close to the fire, where she sat knitting and warming her knees.She was dressed in deep mourning; her face had a faded nobleness, tempered, however, by the somewhat illiberal compression assumed by her lips in obedience to something that was passing in her mind.She was far from the lamp, but though her eyes were fixed upon her active needles she was not looking at them.What she really saw was quite another train of affairs.The room was spacious and dim; the thick London fog had oozed into it even through its superior defences.It was full of dusky, massive, valuable things.The old lady sat motionless save for the regularity of her clicking needles, which seemed as personal to her and as expressive as prolonged fingers.If she was thinking something out, she was thinking it thoroughly.
When she looked up, on the entrance of a girl of twenty, it might have been guessed that the appearance of this young lady was not an interruption of her meditation, but rather a contribution to it.The young lady, who was charming to behold, was also in deep mourning, which had a freshness, if mourning can be fresh, an air of having been lately put on.She went straight to the bell beside the chimney-piece and pulled it, while in her other hand she held a sealed and directed letter.Her companion glanced in silence at the letter; then she looked still harder at her work.The girl hovered near the fireplace, without speaking, and after a due, a dignified interval the butler appeared in response to the bell.The time had been sufficient to make the silence between the ladies seem long.
The younger one asked the butler to see that her letter should be posted; and after he had gone out she moved vaguely about the room, as if to give her grandmother--for such was the elder personage--a chance to begin a colloquy of which she herself preferred not to strike the first note.As equally with herself her companion was on the face of it capable of holding out, the tension, though it was already late in the evening, might have lasted long.But the old lady after a little appeared to recognise, a trifle ungraciously, the girl's superior resources.
"Have you written to your mother?"
"Yes, but only a few lines, to tell her I shall come and see her in the morning.""Is that all you've got to say?" asked the grandmother.
"I don't quite know what you want me to say.""I want you to say that you've made up your mind.""Yes, I've done that, granny."
"You intend to respect your father's wishes?""It depends upon what you mean by respecting them.I do justice to the feelings by which they were dictated.""What do you mean by justice?" the old lady retorted.
The girl was silent a moment; then she said: "You'll see my idea of it.""I see it already! You'll go and live with her.""I shall talk the situation over with her to-morrow and tell her that I think that will be best.""Best for her, no doubt!"
"What's best for her is best for me."
"And for your brother and sister?" As the girl made no reply to this her grandmother went on: "What's best for them is that you should acknowledge some responsibility in regard to them and, considering how young they are, try and do something for them.""They must do as I've done--they must act for themselves.They have their means now, and they're free.""Free? They're mere children."
"Let me remind you that Eric is older than I.""He doesn't like his mother," said the old lady, as if that were an answer.
"I never said he did.And she adores him.""Oh, your mother's adorations!"
"Don't abuse her now," the girl rejoined, after a pause.
The old lady forbore to abuse her, but she made up for it the next moment by saying: "It will be dreadful for Edith.""What will be dreadful?"
"Your desertion of her."
"The desertion's on her side."
"Her consideration for her father does her honour.""Of course I'm a brute, n'en parlons plus," said the girl."We must go our respective ways," she added, in a tone of extreme wisdom and philosophy.
Her grandmother straightened out her knitting and began to roll it up."Be so good as to ring for my maid," she said, after a minute.
The young lady rang, and there was another wait and another conscious hush.Before the maid came her mistress remarked: "Of course then you'll not come to ME, you know.""What do you mean by 'coming' to you?"
"I can't receive you on that footing."
"She'll not come WITH me, if you mean that.""I don't mean that," said the old lady, getting up as her maid came in.This attendant took her work from her, gave her an arm and helped her out of the room, while Rose Tramore, standing before the fire and looking into it, faced the idea that her grandmother's door would now under all circumstances be closed to her.She lost no time however in brooding over this anomaly: it only added energy to her determination to act.All she could do to-night was to go to bed, for she felt utterly weary.She had been living, in imagination, in a prospective struggle, and it had left her as exhausted as a real fight.Moreover this was the culmination of a crisis, of weeks of suspense, of a long, hard strain.Her father had been laid in his grave five days before, and that morning his will had been read.In the afternoon she had got Edith off to St.Leonard's with their aunt Julia, and then she had had a wretched talk with Eric.Lastly, she had made up her mind to act in opposition to the formidable will, to a clause which embodied if not exactly a provision, a recommendation singularly emphatic.She went to bed and slept the sleep of the just.