"I hope so, sweetheart."
She stared quietly at the rosy ball that sank, below us and far away, at the rim of the sea—Margarita's sea.
"I know there is, Jerry," she said simply. "Look at that, the way I do, and you'll know, too."
And just then, I thought I did ...
Sue was at the wedding, of course, grey, and a little worn, now, but dressed à merveille and delightful in her pride at her genius-boy. His sister, a wonderful, modern young woman, has learned her "trade," indeed, though one that her mother never dreamed of, and will decorate, furnish and supply with everything from ancestral portraits to patent mouse-traps any structure from a hotel to a steam-yacht that you may place in her capable, college-bred hands. A remarkable achievement is young Susan—the achievement of the fin de siècle generation. At the wedding-breakfast she described to me her last "job"; the putting in commission of a dilapidated fifteenth-century château for its new oil-king owner—he was born in a bog-cabin in Ireland and never tasted anything but potatoes and stir-about till he was fourteen. But Susan has raked Europe for a service fit for him to eat his cabbage from and Asia for rugs fit for his no longer bare feet, and has deposited his good American cheque in her bank. She is improving the occasion of her American visit by an extended hunt for old silver and brasses and china for a great country house on the Hudson—its many-millioned mistress will pay well for her "imported" treasures!
Truly is Susan a lesson to us, and wide would be her great-grandmother's eyes could she see Susan disposing of her girlish samplers and draping her camel's-hair shawl behind a Hawthorne jar. And I am bound to admit that Susan is not marrying, though her mother was struggling with two delicate children at her age. No, Susan has no need to "marry to get away from home." As fast as this accomplished young woman establishes herself in a charming house, some envious person buys it of her, and she moves serenely to a new one, a contented, self-respecting Arab with a bank account.
Ah, well, perhaps it will be, as her mother triumphantly declares, all the more honour to the man who gets her, after all! We oldsters must not be stubborn, nowadays.
My mother, like old Mrs. Upgrove, is living still; well and happy, both of them, thank God, and as proud of their sons as if either had ever done anything to deserve it. Neither of them has much to say of Margarita, I have noticed, though both fondle her children, a little absently, perhaps, and feign to wonder what it is we see in Peggy that blinds us to the excellencies of the others—stouter children and more respectful, my dear!
And Death, that spares them both, and old Madam Bradley, too (eighty-eight now and half paralysed for nearly twenty years!), what had we done that he should take away one whom we and the world—her world—could so ill spare? Does Someone, indeed, know why, my sweetheart Peggy? I try to think so, but it is hard to see.
Nine years ago Harriet put Peggy into her mother's arms and praised the little thing and kissed them both, and then told Roger that she must leave them, for she felt ill and would not risk the responsibility of further nursing. She would send a good nurse straight from New York, she said, and Roger himself took her there, leaving the doctor with Margarita, as soon as he dared. He brought back the other nurse, wired me to look after Harriet, and left her comfortable in the little apartment of a good friend of hers, with a promise of a speedy return. He never saw her alive again.