"And Death stopped knitting at the muffling band.
'The shroud is done,' he muttered, 'toe to chin.'
He snapped the ends, and tucked his needles in."
JOHN MASEFIELD.
After a sleepless night, and after the protracted toilet of the old and
feeble, Lady Louisa tackled her task with unabated determination. She
dictated a telegram to her lawyer, sent out the nurse for a walk, and
desired Janey to bring Harry to her.
Harry, who was toiling over his arithmetic under the cedar, with the
help of a tutor from Riebenbridge and a box of counters, obeyed with
alacrity. He looked a very beaming creature, with "fresh morning face,"
as he came into his mother's room.
"Good morning, mamma."
"Good morning, my son."
The terrible ruler looked benign. She nodded and smiled at him. He did
not feel as cowed as usual.
"You can go away, Janey, and you needn't come back till I ring."
"And now tell me all about the performing dogs," said the terrible
ruler in the bed, when Janey had left the room.
Harry saw that she was really interested, and he gave her an exact
account, interrupted by the bubbling up of his own laughter, of a dog
which had been dressed up as a man in a red coat, with a cocked hat and
a gun. He could hardly tell her for laughing. The dread personage
laughed too, and said, "Capital! Capital!" And he showed her one of the
tricks, which consisted of sitting up on your hind legs with a pipe in
your mouth. He imitated exactly how the dog had sat, which in a man was
perhaps not quite so mirth-provoking as in a dog. Nevertheless, the
dread personage laughed again.
It promised to be an agreeable morning. He hoped it would be a long time
before she remembered his arithmetic and sent him back to it, that
hopeless guess-work which he sometimes bribed Tommy the gardener's boy
to do for him in the tool-shed.
"And then you got your gloves!" said the dread personage suddenly. "How
many pairs was it?" Harry was bewildered, and stared blankly at her.
"You must remember how many pairs it was." Harry knit his poor brow,
rallied his faculties, and said it was two pairs.
"And now," said Lady Louisa, "you may have a chocolate out of my silver
box, and let me hear all about--you know what," and she nodded
confidentially at him.
But he only gaped at her, half frightened. She smiled reassuringly at
him.
"Nurse told me all about it," she said encouragingly. "That was why you
weren't to tell me. She wanted it to be a great surprise to me."
"I wasn't to say a word," said Harry doubtfully,--"not a word--about
_that_."
"No. That was just what Nurse said to me. You weren't to say a single
word last night, until she had told me. But now I know all about it, so
we can talk. Was it great fun?"
"I don't know."
"It was great fun when I did it. How I laughed!"
"I didn't laugh. She told me not to."
"Well, no. Not at first. She was quite right. And what did her brother
say? Nurse said he went with you."
"Yes. We called for him, and he went with us, with a flower in his
button-hole--a rose it was. He gave me one too."
Harry looked at his button-hole, as if expecting to see the rose still
in it. But that sign of merry-making was absent.
Lady Louisa had on a previous occasion severely reprimanded Nurse for
taking Harry to tea at her brother's house, a solicitor's clerk in
Ipswich. Her spirits rose. She had detected her in an act of flagrant
disobedience. And as likely as not they had all gone to a play together.
"Capital!" she said suavely. "He was just the right person to go with.
That was what I said to Nurse. And what did _he_ talk about?"
"He said, 'Mum's the word. Keep it all quiet till the old cat dies,' and
he slapped me on the back and said, 'Mind that, brother-in-law.' He was
very nice indeed."
A purple mark like a bruise came to Lady Louisa's clay-coloured cheeks.
There was a long pause before she spoke again.
"And did you write your name nicely, like Janey taught you?" She spoke
with long-drawn gasps, each word articulated with difficulty.
"Yes," said Harry anxiously, awed by the fixity of her eyes upon him. "I
did indeed, mamma. I was very particular."
"Your full name?"
"Yes, the man said my full name--Henry de la Pole Manvers."
"That was the man at the registry office?"
"Yes."
"And"--the voice laboured heavily and was barely audible--"did Nurse
write her name nicely too?"
"Yes, and her brother and the man. We all wrote them, and then we all
had tea at Frobisher's,--only it wasn't tea,--and Nurse's brother
ordered a bottle of champagne. Nurse didn't want him to, but he said
people didn't get married every day. And he drank our health, and I
drank a little tiny sip, and it made me sneeze."
Lady Louisa lay quite motionless, the sweat upon her forehead, looking
at her son, who smiled seraphically back at her.
And so Nurse had actually thought she could outwit _her_--had pitted
herself against _her_? She would shortly learn a thing or two on that
head.
A great cold was invading her. And as she looked at Harry, it was as if
some key, some master key, were suddenly and noiselessly turned in the
lock. Without moving her eyes, she saw beyond him the door, expecting to
see the handle turn, and Nurse or Janey to come in. But the door
remained motionless. Nevertheless, a key somewhere had turned.
Everything was locked tight--the room, the walls, the bed, herself in
it--as in a vice.
"Go back to your lessons," she said to Harry, "and send Janey to me."
She felt a sudden imperative need of Janey.
But Harry, so docile, so schooled to obedience, made no motion to obey
her. He only looked vacantly, expectantly at her.
She spoke again, but he paid no heed. She spoke yet again with anger,
but this time he was fidgeting with the watch on her table and did not
even look up. She saw him as if through a glass screen.
A wave of anger shook her.
"Leave the room this moment, and do as I tell you," she said, with her
whole strength. Had he suddenly became deaf? Or had she----? Was
she----? A great fear took her. He put back the watch on its stand, and
touched the silver box in which the chocolates were kept.
"May I have another--just one other?" he said, opening it, his voice
barely audible through the glass screen.
And then, glancing at her for permission, he was seized with helpless
laughter.
"Oh, mamma! You do look so funny, with your mouth all on one
side--funnier than the dog in the hat."
His words and his laughter reached her, faint yet distinct, and she
understood what had befallen her. Two large tears gathered in her
anguished eyes and then slowly ran down her distorted face. Everything
else remained fixed, as in a vice, save Harry, rocking himself to and
fro, and snapping his fingers with delight.