It was only a few days after this interview that the news of Mr. Westmacott’s death reached them. Toppie spent ten days in Bath with friends before returning to the Rectory, and it was Mrs. Bradley who went to her first. She said, when she came back, that Toppie wanted to see Giles and hoped that he could come to her next morning. She wanted very much to see him. Giles, when he had been given this message, went away and shut himself into his study.
“Well, do you expect she’s going to have him at last!” Ruth exclaimed. “For my part I believe she is, and a good job, too. Giles may be able to wake her up a bit. I find Toppie distinctly depressing myself.”
“Poor old Giles,” said Rosemary, “it made him look most awfully queer. It’ll be a shame if she doesn’t have him now, after the way he’s waited.—If she doesn’t have him, where do you suppose she’ll live? There’s that jolly cottage on the common empty. It would just do for her; with an old aunt to live with her.”
“If she doesn’t have him,” said Ruth sagaciously, “my own feeling is that she’ll go away as far as possible. None of us, except perhaps Mummy, have ever meant anything to her. She’s not got much heart, if you ask my opinion. Or, at all events, only heart enough for one person.”
“How did you find her?” Alix asked Mrs. Bradley when they were left alone. “She will be too unhappy now, so soon after her father’s death, to think of Giles. But for the future, is there hope did you feel?”
“I really don’t know what to think, dear,” said Mrs. Bradley, taking off her hat and putting up her hand, with a gesture so like Giles, to push back her hair. “Toppie is rather strange. That is what I feel most. She doesn’t seem unhappy. Not more unhappy than she’s always been, I mean. She talked about Owen all the time. She said she had never felt him so near. That doesn’t look very hopeful for Giles, does it?”
“She might say that just because she was really turning a little towards Giles. One might hope that it would work like that in her, perhaps,” said Alix, though she had not indeed much hope.
“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Bradley sadly. “But haven’t you felt for a long time that something has come between Toppie and Giles? Since last Autumn I’ve felt it. I believe, when she came back from Bournemouth, he asked her, and that it displeased her and made her draw away.”
“Yes, I believe, too, that it was like that,” said Alix. “I have felt her changed.”
“You know there’s something in what Ruth says,” Mrs. Bradley went on after a moment. “I’ve always loved and admired Toppie and thought her a lovely creature; but I confess to you, Alix—because you understand her so well—that she has always seemed to me a little heartless. Or is that too strong a word? I don’t know. Something is lacking. She would spend herself for people and do everything for them; there is no selfishness in her at all; but it’s as if she’d do the more because she felt the less, and had to make up for it. It’s strange, Alix, selfish, warm-hearted people may give much less pain than lovely people like Toppie. Owen was selfish compared to Toppie; but I don’t think he ever gave pain.”