Even my dear mother did not, I think, feel the shock of her bereavement so much as might have been supposed. One may say, without disrespect, that the loss of my father gave point and justification to my mother's attitude toward life. Kind, gentle soul that she was, my mother was afflicted with what might be called the worrying temperament; a disposition characteristic of that troublous time. My memory seems to fasten upon the matter of domestic labour as representing the crux and centre of my dear mother's grievances and topics of lament prior to my father's death. The subject may seem to border upon the ridiculous, as an influence upon one's general point of view; but at that time it was really more tragic than farcical, and I know that what was called "the servant question"—as such it was gravely treated in books and papers, and even by leader-writers and lecturers—formed the basis of a great deal of my mother's conversation, just as I am sure that it coloured her outlook upon life, and strengthened her tendency to worry over everything, from the wear-and-tear of house-linen to the morality of the people. All this was incomprehensible and absurd to my father, though, had he but thought of it, it was really more human than his own attitude; for certainly my mother was interested and concerned in the daily lives of her fellow creatures, though not in a cheering or illuminating manner perhaps.
But, as I say, the deprecatory, worrying attitude had become second nature with my mother long years before her widowhood, and had lined and seamed her poor forehead and silvered her hair before my Rugby days were over. Bereavement merely gave point to a mood already well established.
That I should not return to Cambridge was decided as a matter of course within the week of my father's funeral, when we learned that the little he had left behind him would not even pay for the dilapidations of the rectory. There was practically nothing, when my father's affairs were put in order, beyond my mother's little property, a recent legacy, the investment of which in Canadian railway stocks brought in about a hundred and fifty a year.
Thus I found myself confronted with a sufficiently serious situation for a young man whose training so far had no more fitted him for taking part in any particular division of the battle of life, where the prize sought is an income, than for the administration of the planet Mars. Rugby was better than some of the great public schools in this respect, for a lad with definite purposes and ambitions, but its curriculum had far less bearing upon the working life of the age than it had upon its games and pastimes and the affairs of nations and peoples long since passed away. Yet Rugby belonged to a group of schools that were admittedly the best, and certainly the most outrageously costly, of the educational establishments of the period.
I think my sister Lucy was more shocked than any one else by the death of our father. I say shocked, because I am not certain whether or not the word grieved would apply accurately. For one thing, Lucy had never before seen any dead person. Neither had I, for that matter; but Lucy was more affected by the actual presence in the house of Death, than I was. Twice a day for years she had kissed our father's forehead. Now and again she had sat upon the arm of his chair and stroked his thin hair. These demonstrations were connected, I believe, with the quest of favours—permission, money, and so forth; but doubtless affection played a part in them.
As for Lucy's home life, a little conversation I recall on the occasion of her driving me to the station when I was leaving for what proved my last term at Cambridge, seems to me to throw some light. I had but recently learned of Lucy's engagement to marry Doctor Woodthrop, of Davenham Minster, our nearest market-town. I had found Woodthrop a decent fellow enough, but thirty-four as against Lucy's twenty-one, inclining ominously to corpulence, and as flatly prosaic and unadventurous a spirit as a small country town could produce. Now, as Lucy seemed to me to have hankerings in the direction of social pleasures and the like, with a penchant for brilliancy and daring, I was a little puzzled about her engagement, for Woodthrop was one who kept a few conversational pleasantries on hand, as a man keeps old pipes on a rack, for periodical use at suitable times.
"So you are actually going to be married, Loo?" I said.
"Oh, well, engaged, Dick," she replied, with a little blush.
"With a view, I presume. Then I suppose it follows that you are in love—h'm?"
"Why, Dick, what a cross-examiner you are!" The blush increased.