THE DEAD HAND
Audrey was wakened up that night, just after she had gone to sleep, by a
touch on the cheek. Her mother, palely indistinct in the darkness, was
standing by the bedside. She wore a white wrap over her night attire, and
the customary white bandage from which emanated a faint odour of
eau-de-Cologne, was around her forehead.
"Audrey, darling, I must speak to you."
Instantly Audrey became the wise directress of her poor foolish mother's
existence.
"Mother," she said, with firm kindness, "please do go back to bed at once.
This sort of thing is simply frightful for your neuralgia. I'll come to you
in one moment."
And Mrs. Moze meekly obeyed; she had gone even before Audrey had had time
to light her candle. Audrey was very content in thus being able to control
her mother and order everything for the best. She guessed that the old lady
had got some idea into her head about the property, or about her own will,
or about the solicitor, or about a tombstone, and that it was worrying her.
She and Miss Ingate (who had now returned home) had had a very extensive
palaver, in low voices that never ceased, after the triumphant departure of
Mr. Foulger. Audrey had cautiously protested; she was afraid her mother
would be fatigued, and she saw no reason why her mother should be
acquainted with all the details of a complex matter; but the gossiping
habit of a quarter of a century was too powerful for Audrey.
In the large parental bedroom the only light was Audrey's candle. Mrs. Moze
was lying on the right half of the great bed, where she had always lain.
She might have lain luxuriously in the middle, with vast spaces at either
hand, but again habit was too powerful.
The girl, all in white, held the candle higher, and the shadows everywhere
shrunk in unison. Mrs. Moze blinked.
"Put the candle on the night-table," said Mrs. Moze curtly.
Audrey did so. The bedroom, for her, was full of the souvenirs of parental
authority. Her first recollections were those of awe in regard to the
bedroom. And when she thought that on that bed she had been born, she had a
very queer sensation.
"I've decided," said Mrs. Moze, lying on her back, and looking up at the
ceiling, "I've decided that your father's wishes must be obeyed."
"What about, mother?"
"About those shares going to the National Reformation Society. He meant
them to go, and they must go to the Society. I've thought it well over and
I've quite decided. I didn't tell Miss Ingate, as it doesn't concern her.
But I felt I must tell you at once."
"Mother!" cried Audrey. "Have you taken leave of your senses?" She
shivered; the room was very cold, and as she shivered her image in the
mirror of the wardrobe shivered, and also her shadow that climbed up the
wall and bent at right-angles at the cornice till it reached the middle of
the ceiling.
Mrs. Moze replied obstinately:
"I've not taken leave of my senses, and I'll thank you to remember that I'm
your mother. I have always carried out your father's wishes, and at my time
of life I can't alter. Your father was a very wise man. We shall be as well
off as we always were. Better, because I can save, and I shall save. We
have no complaint to make; I should have no excuse for disobeying your
father. Everything is mine to do as I wish with it, and I shall give the
shares to the Society. What the shares are worth can't affect my duty.
Besides, perhaps they aren't worth anything. I always understood that
things like that were always jumping up and down, and generally worthless
in the end.... That's all I wanted to tell you."
Why did Audrey seize the candle and walk straight out of the bedroom,
leaving darkness behind her? Was it because the acuteness of her feelings
drove her out, or was it because she knew instinctively that her mother's
decision would prove to be immovable? Perhaps both.
She dropped back into her own bed with a soundless sigh of exhaustion. She
did not blow out the candle, but lay staring at it. Her dream was
annihilated. She foresaw an interminable, weary and futile future in and
about Moze, and her mother always indisposed, always fretful, and curiously
obstinate in weakness. But Audrey, despite her tragic disillusion, was less
desolated than made solemn. In the most disturbing way she knew herself to
be the daughter of her father and her mother; and she comprehended that her
destiny could not be broken off suddenly from theirs. She was touched
because her mother deemed her father a very wise man, whereas she, Audrey,
knew that he was nothing of the sort. She felt sorry for both of them. She
pitied her father, and she was a mother to her mother. Their relations
together, and the mystic posthumous spell of her father over her mother,
impressed her profoundly.... And she was proud of herself for having
demonstrated her courage by preventing the solicitor from running away, and
extraordinarily ashamed of her sentimental and brazen behaviour to the
solicitor afterwards. These various thoughts mitigated her despair as she
gazed at the sinking candle. Nevertheless her dream was annihilated.