“Lord Raynham and Master Henry have come?” she asked.
“Yes, my lady: they arrived an hour ago.”
Again she paused. Whatever she said or did to-day seemed to be laden with significance, trivial though it appeared.
“Let them know I have come in,” she said. “They will come and have tea with me in the drawing-room in ten minutes.” (What was it children liked with their tea?) “And a boiled egg for them both,” she added.
She went slowly up the staircase which last June had been a country lane of wild-flowers at her ball, and looking back to that night she wondered whether, if among her guests then had come the prescience of what the next six months were to hold for her, she would not have chosen to die then and there, so deeply had the iron entered. But the past was dead: she must not forget that; and even to think of the bitterness of it was to allow it to writhe and struggle again. But there were things in the past—these children, for instance, though she had never found them particularly interesting—whom the death of the past, in the sense that she had promised it to her husband, made more alive. It was the wretchedness and alienation of the whole past, as well as these tragic six months, that she had meant should be dead, and she willed it more surely in caring for all that was truly vital in it, in neglecting no longer those whom she had neglected too much. She did not reproach herself now for the small part that her children had had in her life; but if Thurso lived, the letter she had written to him must be fulfilled here also. She had forgiven him, and she must amend herself so that he should forgive her. Even now she recognised that the children could help in stabbing the estrangement of the past to death. She was their mother, and though for all these years she had overlooked the joy, just as she had forgotten the pains, of maternity, it was potential still. So ... would it not be better if she did not even see Villars? He would understand that as clearly as any words could make him. Yet she rejected that, and knew the cause of her rejection—that, though she told herself her mind was made up, she was still debating what she should say to him.
All this passed like a series of pictures rapidly presented to her as she went up the stairs. Then she paused underneath the electric light at the top, and took out the telegram from the envelope. She looked first at the end of it, as was natural, to see from whom it came, expecting to find it was from Maud. But it was signed “Thurso.”
Then she read it.
“I am cured, and I humbly entreat your pardon, though your letter so generously has given it me. Shall I come back, or would you possibly come out here? I will return immediately if you wish.—Thurso.”
She read it once, and read it again, in order to be sure of the sense of this incredible thing. Could it be a hoax? If so, who could have played so grim a joke? But she hardly grasped it. Yet it was clear and in order; the hour at which it was sent off was there, and the hour of English time when it had been received.
“But it is incredible,” she said to herself. “It means a miracle.”