I thought I never could, and I thought so still more when I came home the next evening, after one of the very happiest days I ever spent. But I have not quite kept to it, as I will tell before I come to the end of my story.
I must go straight on—was it not sweet of them to make me so happy?—they would not let me keep the least sore feeling about what I had done; they would have it I had been so “brave and unselfish”—fancy me unselfish!—in going to see Mrs Fetherston on my own account, as I had done. Everything was coming right, Mrs Fetherston had fallen in love with their mother, and what wonder! They were all to spend the next summer holidays at Southerwold—that was the old home of the Whytes, which none of the Yew Trees children had ever seen; “Uncle Hugo,” as they called him, was to get quite well immediately, and though I felt more inclined to cry than to smile when they said this, knowing what papa thought about Major Whyte, I took care not to cloud their bright hopes. It was so like the Whytes. They could not see anything other than hopefully—some people think that a bad way to face life and its troubles, but I really can’t say. All I know is that when troubles do come, these dear friends of ours meet them bravely.
“Isn’t Uncle Hugo a darling?” said Yvonne. “Of course we’ve known hint all our lives, though we never saw Aunt Fetherston before. But it’s nearly five years since Uncle Hugo went to India, so of course we had all to learn each other over again, as he says. He’s taken such a fancy to you, Connie. He’s coming down here to stay with us as soon as ever the milder weather really sets in; just now he’s best in London. There’s no pleasure in being in the country if one can’t go out.”
“No, of course not,” I agreed. Evey’s confident tone almost made me feel as if, perhaps, papa was wrong, and that Major Whyte would get well again after all.
But, alas! it was not so. He did seem to get better for a little, and even papa, who was up in London again, a month or so later, and went to see him, allowed when he came home, that he could not have believed Major Whyte could have rallied so much. And as the spring set in early, and the good symptoms continued, all was arranged for his coming down to the Yew Trees; the very day and train were fixed, and we three were nearly as pleased at the idea of seeing him again as the Whytes themselves, when the blow fell. Something, no one could say certainly what—it might have been a slight chill, or over-fatigue, or, perhaps merely the pleasant excitement of the visit in prospect—something—he was so far gone that a mere nothing was enough, papa said—brought on his cough again fearfully. He broke a blood-vessel, I think, and there was only time to telegraph for Captain and Mrs Whyte, and the elder children to go to bid him good-bye before he passed away, very peacefully and very happily, Evey and Mary told me, when they were able to tell me about it. For it was a real and sad grief to them all, and it was the first trouble of that kind they had ever known.
“He sent his love and good-bye to you,” Yvonne said; ”‘little Connie Percy’ he called you. And I heard him say, ‘but for her, things might not have been as they are.’ Yes, he was quite happy. Do you know,” she went on in a very low voice, “years and years ago Uncle Hugo was going to be married to somebody very nice and sweet, and she died. Mother told us—I think it was that that made him so gentle and kind, though he was very brave too.”
The children gave no thought to the difference Major Whyte’s death would make to them all in the end. I think Captain Whyte told papa all, but I never heard or thought about it till the change actually came. That was two years after Major Whyte’s death, when poor old Mrs Fetherston died too. She felt the shock of his death very much, for though he had not been originally her favourite nephew, no one could have lived with him without learning to love him. She had grown dependent on him, too, for helping her to manage things. Altogether it was a great blow, though now, fortunately, as things were, she had Captain Whyte instead, and for the rest of her life she did indeed cling to him and his wife, and to them all. But she never came down to Elmwood again. She stayed on at Southerwold, where she went immediately after Major Whyte’s death, and one or the other, or more of the Yew Trees family were always with her. So I never saw her again, though now and then there was a talk of her coming to the Yew Trees.
These two years were very happy. The Whytes, though they still lived very simply, were free from anxiety about the future, and instead of this making them selfish, it only made them the kinder. All children, I suppose, live a good deal in the present. I don’t think I understood this till the great change came, which made such a difference to me. I had thought, I suppose, that things would always go on much the same.