The mellow form of Kensington Palace came into sight. It looked exactly the same as it always looked. It was strange to think that more than sixty years ago the little old woman now being borne to the grave should have been a young girl in that Palace and there received the news of her accession. Here was no noise of music for the dead, but like the sound of running water the ripple of children's laughter. In the precincts of Kensington Palace the children were playing as usual with their hoops and their balls. The Queen herself may have played here as a child long before she was a queen. It was a spot sacred to children, not to the dead; sacred to the future, not to the past.
"Let me remember that thought," Mary said to herself. "And when I think of the day of the Queen's funeral I will always remember that I am not dead yet and that while I am alive I have a future. I must be more sympathetic with Muriel, more patient with Geoffrey, more solicitous for Jemmie. And I must not fret for Richard, for my boy."
It was a pity that Geoffrey went back to Oxford the day after the funeral and that Muriel went back to school. Mary felt that from the state of mind she had achieved on that day she might have drawn closer to her children.
The first year of the new century came to its Spring, blossomed and shed its blossom, opened to its Summer and reached its Autumn without Mary's hopes of a deeper intimacy being realized. She began to wonder if Richard would return from South Africa as much a stranger as the other two. His letters betrayed no falling off in affection; but affectionate letters might be the result of habit and not reflect the man that was being wrought out of her boy, down there beneath the unfamiliar Southern stars.
In her maternal loneliness Mary found herself more than ever inclined to adopt Jemmie. He would really have been a most satisfactory child if he would only have abstained from continually reminding her that age was creeping fast upon both of them. It was difficult to be motherly to a man who would talk all the time about his stiff joints and hardening arteries, who would grunt and groan when he rose from an arm-chair, and who after dinner had scarcely read half a dozen headlines of The Times before he was fast asleep. Mary did not want to be as old as all that, and she wished that her husband would remember that there were fifteen years between them. Fifteen long years. Or was it only because Richard was away that the years seemed longer nowadays? They had fled by so swiftly when he was little. She must go in for gardening more seriously this Autumn. If Richard came back next Spring, he would appreciate her English flowers after Africa; and if he did not come back, the flowers would be a small consolation. It was a pity that she had begun so early to work among girls. That club would have been such an interesting occupation for the present. But if she began again now, it would mean arguments with Jemmie, who would never understand why, when he was always at home, she wanted to wear herself out ministering to a lot of strange girls. Strangeness was Jemmie's bugbear. Strange people, strange ideas, strange manners, strange places, strange clothes, they were all equally abhorrent to Jemmie nowadays.
"I may not be very distinguished or anything like that," he boasted. "But at any rate I'm not always running after new-fangled ideas. Some people would call me old-fashioned and consider me out of date; but I don't care what they call me or what they think me. When I was at school we used to kick fellows who tried to be original. We were rough and ready in those days, my dear, but, by George, we were men! Yes, by George, m-e-n. Men!"
"I thought you were boys," Mary laughed.
"Now, my dear, you know perfectly well what I mean."
"Yes, yes, you foolish old thing, of course I know what you mean. And I wish you could make Geoffrey a little less original."
"Ah, Geoffrey! Geoffrey is becoming a problem. I cannot think where he inherits his low tastes."