East of the Shadows

by Mrs. Hubert Barclay

"You will see the long line of glass lights in the kitchen garden. These are exclusively for his violets. He always asks for them, and places them in a vase of water in front of her portrait. A little thing, but very pathetic, isn't it?"

"Does he speak?"

"Oh yes. He has always received me with some polite remark, as if I were a perfect stranger whom he had never seen before, but he always seemed in a hurry to get rid of me. Sometimes he would excuse his haste by saying he was expecting a visitor. It was just the same when he saw Mrs. Goodman. He was perfectly civil, but evidently impatient of anything or any one who disturbed him, who distracted his attention from his incessant waiting and listening. It is so difficult to know how much he has really understood. Sometimes I think that under the cloud he may really be aware of a great deal more than we give him credit for, but he shows no sign of it."

"Does he see Major Heathcote?"

"Sometimes; not very often. When the Major and his wife first came to live here they were most anxious to do everything in their power to make his life as happy as possible; but after a while they realised what I had told them from the first, and that was, that the more he was undisturbed the more content he was. Or rather I should say the less distressed, for he was never content. There was never a moment when I felt I could say, 'Now he is not thinking of her; now he has really forgotten that he is waiting for her.' He takes the Major for his own half-brother, William Heathcote. Bill, he was always called, like his son Bill, the Major. Francis never knew his half-brother very intimately; there was a great disparity in their ages, and Bill never got on very well with his step-mother, Lady Louisa—or rather Mrs. Bill didn't, which came to the same thing. They never came here very much."

"Didn't he know his mother?"

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. "Who can tell? He never appeared to. He was just the same to her as he was to any one else who entered his room—quite polite, but glad when they went away."

"How awful for her!" cried Philippa.

"Yes, it was awful. She was a wonderful woman—one of the old type. She had no notion of admitting the outside world into her affairs, or of discussing her inmost feelings with any one. A woman of dauntless courage, old Lady Louisa; and if some people thought her hard it was not to be wondered at; she was a bit hard, but it was merely a sort of armour she put on in self-defence. She fought every inch of the way—every inch. She never lost patience, even after hope was gone. Everything she could think of she did, trying endless devices to interest and amuse him—for years Francis drove with her every day. And finally she accepted the truth with the same courage with which she had fought against it—the courage that knows when it is beaten—and ceased to try and rouse him. He hasn't been outside his room for years now. Many people don't know he lives here—new-comers to the place, I mean; for the older folk in the village, who reverenced Lady Louisa and loved him, respected her wishes too much to chatter. Which is saying a good deal, isn't it? For it takes a good bit to stay a gossip's tongue. But her will was law in the place, and I never heard of any one attempting to dispute it. I know she suffered agonies of mind, but I never knew her break down until just at the last, when she was dying. She kept death at bay by sheer strength of will for weeks, simply because she couldn't bear to leave him. He was her only son—her only child. And her last words were, 'Let him come soon, O God; let him come soon.' Go and look at her grave and read the inscription she wrote out herself for it. Poor Lady Louisa! and poor Francis!"

"Did you know my father?" asked the girl after a while.