Inside the house the strangeness and the same return were again repeated, this time less perceptibly. On the morrow I went very slowly over the whole house, remaining for some time in each room and staring at every corner and every article of furniture, while I summoned back to me all the ancient happenings that connected me with each. Here was Aunt Jael's front parlour, a little yellower, a little darker, a little dingier than of old. There on the floor by the window was the row of dismal etiolated plants, each in its earth-begrimed saucer. There was her bluebeard cupboard; I opened it, and a smell of decayed fruits and stale sweetmeats escaped; probably no one had been near it for months. There was a jar of ginger, and a French-plum jar. I got as far as handling the lids, but no further: what new flaming letters might not be writ within? Besides, the plums were probably bad, while I never really cared for ginger. There too was the door that once had opened, through which a face of nameless horror once had peeped. There was Lord Benamuckee.
Here was the dining-room, with horsehair furniture and Axminster carpet perhaps shabbier than I remembered them, this room which all through my childhood, even too through my year in France, and in all my life since, has always,—in those moments when I behold myself from outside, when my soul flies away from my body and looks down upon it from afar—been the visual setting and earthly ambience of Mary. Here was the kitchen where Mrs. Cheese had lived, where Robinson Crewjoe had stealthily been born, where my love for scrubbing floors had for ever died. Here was the blue attic, cold, barren, airless; heavy with memories—of misery and cruelty and tears.
After a few nights' dreams in my old bedroom—confused visions of the Château and Fouquier and Elise and Napoleon—the four years of France became literally no more than a dream in my memory. I remembered them rather from the morning's impressions of these nightly visions than from the actual happenings themselves. If indeed they were actual happenings. For frequently I could not be sure, and would fancy that all the complex visions of the life in France had come to me in sleep: until Calendar and Common-Sense convinced me.
Aunt Jael seemed to share my illusions. She would ask me sometimes where I had been, and rail at me for "stopping out" so long, treating my absence as one of hours rather than years. Never, at any rate after the first day or two, did she treat me as though my life at Bear Lawn had been anything but continuous. I treated her likewise, swiftly forgetting the first moment of contact when (as with my Grandmother) she had seemed to me so much smaller, swarthier, dryer, older than in my memory: a stranger who immediately, imperceptibly, became familiar once again. She rarely got out of bed now, and her voice was huskier and less authoritative than of old. But she cursed and railed and threatened almost as bravely as ever. I alone had really changed, and wondered sometimes at the earlier Mary who had taken this bad old woman's imprecations so bitterly to heart. My new heart was too full of the hopes of love to feed on the broodings of hate. Moreover, though the faithful thorned stick lay on the coverlet ready to hand for use it never struck out at me now, and the poor villainous veteran saw no service reminiscent of his ancient glory save floor-thumpings to summon meals—or Mary. I neither feared her nor hated her. I pitied her.
Some weeks before, Mrs. Cheese had been taken ill and had gone back to her friends in the country. About the same time Aunt Jael had taken permanently to her bed, and my Grandmother, who was herself rapidly failing, had had to attend to her sister and do the household work. Sister Briggs came to help in the kitchen in the mornings, and Simeon Greeber charitably allowed Aunt Martha to come over for the day on one or two occasions; but the two old women—the two dying old women—were virtually alone in the big house, with my Grandmother, probably the weaker of the two, struggling against pain, and against the fatigue which marks the journey's end, to keep on her feet for her sister's sake. I realized how selfish I had been not to have come sooner: except that in France another old woman had needed me almost as much.
"I'm glad 'eo've come, my dearie," said my Grandmother on the night of my return. "God has dealt very lovingly with me; but I am full of years, and 'tis time for me to go. I have finished the work He gave me to do. I was waiting for 'ee to come back, my dearie: now I can go Home."
I was sobbing.
"Don't 'ee," she reproved gently. "There is no place for sorrow. Heaven is near, and the peace of God which passeth all understanding."
One strange day I remember: the last valiant effort of Aunt Jael to revive the splendour of her stark imperial days. Glory and Salvation were old and frail now, especially Glory, and for a year and more, the Empress' famous Tuesdays had been abandoned.
"There'll be a last one," declared Aunt Jael, and one Tuesday morning when she felt stronger than usual, decreed a Final Feast. After dinner, which in the regular way I had taken to her in her bed, I helped her to dress, and got her down into the old armchair. Then, as bidden, I sallied forth, hired a cab, drove to Brother Brawn's (robing-house for Jordan) upon the Quay, and after infinite delay, while Glory made minutest traditional preparations with goat's milk, rusks and bags, haled those two mad old Christian women to Number Eight.