“I’m sure that Great-aunt knew.” Indeed I thought so. I think that Great-aunt would always be kind and guessing with a girl. Then I wondered at myself for daring it and thought nervously—‘He’ll snub me. He’ll be right to snub me——’
But he looked across at Great-aunt kindly and said, in just such a withdrawn voice as mine—
“Yes, of course, if ever there was a time when——” Then he half smiled. “Poor old lady! But she’s changed. She used to be so brisk and managing, more like fifty than seventy. But this year’s aged her. She wanted, you know, to give some pearls—her own pearls. But pearls spell sorrow. And Anita would have objected. She told me all about it.”
“She was speaking of them tonight.” We both turned again and looked at her. She had dropped her knitting, or it had slipped from her knee, and she sat in her chair staring down at it with a terrible, comical air of helplessness. Then she caught his eye and forgot the knitting and nodded at him.
“I think—” I said, “I don’t think she understands. She asked me—she forgets I’m a stranger. She asked me——” I broke off. I couldn’t say to him—‘She asked me about Miss Grey and she doesn’t realize that she’s dead.’ One’s afraid of the brutality of words. But he understood. There was a simplicity about him that re-assured one. And he never said—‘It’s Anita’s business. It’s not your business,’ as anyone else might have done. He just said, once again—
“Poor old lady!” and hesitated a minute. Then he got up and went across to her and picked up her wools. I don’t think the others noticed him go. Anita didn’t. She was talking too fast.
“—left a trunk-full of papers and so on. I’d often stored boxes for her. Somehow it never got sent down. I came across it only yesterday. I thought to myself that there was no harm in putting things straight. You know I’m literary executor? Oh yes. She said to me soon after her marriage, half in joke, that she supposed she had got to make a will—and what about her MSS.? ‘I can’t have him worried.’ I offered at once. You see I know so exactly her attitude in literature. There’s a good deal of unpublished stuff—early stuff. But all in hopeless confusion. Tumbled up with bills and programmes and one or two drafts of letters—or so I imagine. She had that annoying habit—that ugly modern habit—of beginning without any invocation, and never a date. But there’s one letter—there’s the draft of a letter that’s important from my point of view.” She broke off with a half laugh. “It sounds a ridiculous statement to make about Madala Grey of all people, but do you know that she couldn’t express herself at all easily on paper?”
Miss Howe nodded.
“Do I know? I’ve known her re-write a letter half a dozen times before she got it to her liking—no, not business letters, letters to her intimates. A most comical trick. Scribble, scribble, scribble—slash! and then crunch goes the sheet into a ball, into the grate, or near it, till it looked as if she were playing snow-balls, and then Madala begins again—and again—and again. Yet she talked well. She talked easily.”
“Isn’t that in keeping?” Mr. Flood struck in. “She didn’t express so much herself in her speech as the mood of the moment.”