"Are you—" she hesitated.
"Yes," said Madame Beattie, "I am sailing. I leave for New York Friday morning."
Esther had a rudimentary sense of humour, and it did occur to her that it would be rather a dire joke if she and Madame Beattie, inexorably linked by destiny, were to go on the same boat. But Madame Beattie drily if innocently reassured her. And yet was it innocently? Esther could not be sure. She was sailing, she explained, for Naples. She should never think of venturing the northern crossing at this season.
And that afternoon while Madame Beattie took her drive, Esther had her own trunks brought to her room and she and Sophy packed. Sophy was enchanted. Mrs. Blake was going to New York, so Mrs. Blake told her, and as soon as she got settled Sophy would be sent for. She was not to say anything, however, for Mrs. Blake's going depended on its being carried out quietly, for fear Madame Beattie should object. Sophy understood. She had been quiet about many things connected with the tranquillity dependent on Madame Beattie, and she even undertook to have the express come at a certain hour and move the trunks down carefully. Sophy held many reins of influence.
When Madame Beattie came back from driving, Andrea was with her. She had called at the shop and taken him away from his fruity barricades, and they had jogged about the streets, Madame Beattie talking and Andrea listening with a profound concentration, his smile in abeyance, his black eyes fiery. When they stopped at the house Esther, watching from the window, contemptuously noted how familiar they were. Madame Beattie, she thought, was as intimate with a foreign fruit-seller as with one of her own class. Madame Beattie seemed impressing upon him some command or at least instructions. Andrea listened, obsequiously attentive, and when it was over he took his hat off, in a grand manner, and bending, kissed her hand. He ran up the steps and rang for her, and after she had gone in, Esther saw him, dramatic despondency in every drooping muscle, walk sorrowfully away.
Madame Beattie, as if she meant to accomplish all her farewells betimes, had the hardihood, this being the hour when Rhoda Knox took an airing, to walk upstairs to her step-sister's room and seat herself by the bedside before grandmother had time to turn to the wall. There she sat, pulling off her gloves and talking casually as if they had been in the habit of daily converse, while grandmother lay and pierced her with unyielding eyes. There was not emotion in the glance, no aversion or remonstrance. It was the glance she had for Esther, for Rhoda Knox. "Here I am," it said, "flat, but not at your mercy. You can't make me do anything I don't want to do. I am in the last citadel of apparent helplessness. You can't any of you drag me out of my bed. You can't even make me speak." And she would not speak. Esther, creeping out on the landing to listen, was confident grandmother never said a word. What spirit it was, what indomitable pluck, thought Esther, to lie there at the mercy of Madame Beattie, and deny herself even the satisfaction of a reply. All that Madame Beattie said Esther could not hear, but evidently she was assuring her sister that she was an arch fool to lie there and leave Esther in supreme possession of the house.
"Get up," Madame Beattie said, at one point. "There's nothing the matter with you. One day of liberty'd be better than lying here and dying by inches and having that Knox woman stare at you. With your constitution, Susan, you've got ten good years before you. Get up and rule your house. I shall be gone and you won't have me to worry you, and in a few days she'll be gone, too."
So she knew it, Esther realised, with a quickened heart. She slipped back into her room and stood there silent until Madame Beattie, calling Sophy to do some extra service for her, went away to her own room. And still grandmother did not speak.