But the younger ones were not moved by this influence. They were the more dissatisfied with their mother’s defence, because Meredith had chimed in, to put arguments into her mouth when she was about, as they believed, to break down. Had she been permitted to break down, a more full explanation might have been had, and the children might then have forgiven their mother; but, as it was, there had been too much and not enough. An insufficient explanation is the most painful of family misfortunes. It gives a sense of falsehood and insincerity to the mind. When you do not explain at all, it is possible you may be innocent: but when you explain profusely, dwelling upon some sides of the matter while ignoring others, you must be guilty: and the impression left is all the more unhappy and unsatisfactory that it is in its way definitive and final, and all are precluded from opening up the subject again. Unless some new incident took place, or some accident which disturbed the family laws, Dolff could not ask any more questions. He was too young to know what to do, too proud and shame-faced to hazard the credit of the family by making inquiries in other quarters. An uneasy sense that everything was different, that his own position and that of everybody else was changed, that he was no longer sure of the ground on which he stood, or the relations of those around him, was in Dolff’s mind. It must make a difference that his father was alive, even though that father was a madman: and vague notions came into his painfully exercised brain—ideas half seen, uncomprehended, of some sense in which his mother might have done what she had done for their sakes, although she had professed in the same breath that it was for her husband’s sake she had done it, that he might not be shut up away from her. Julia, on the other hand who was much more sharp-witted than Dolff, had seized like lightning upon this inconsistency, and could not forget it.
“She said it was for him and then she said it was for us,” cried the girl. “How could it be for us when it was for him? It could not be supposed good for us that there should have been some one shut up there in the wing, and when we might have found it out any day.”
“I never found it out nor thought of it,” said Dolff. “If I had been told of it I should not have believed it. I should have said my mother was the last person in the world for mysteries—the very last person in the world—and that everything in this house was honest and above-board.”
“I never thought like that,” said Julia, shaking her head. “There was always something queer. Vicars, that was our servant, and yet not our servant, and that cry that one heard——”
“What cry?”
“Oh, an awful cry that we heard sometimes. Janet heard it when she had only been here a week, and she was dreadfully frightened. So was I at first,” said Julia, with dignity. “It has only been for a few years: mamma explained it to me: she said it was the wind in the vacant chimneys that were not used. Oh, Dolff, though she knew very well it was not the wind, and the chimneys were not vacant! Dolff, mamma has said a great many things that are——”
“Don’t talk of the mother, Ju—I’m very fond of the mother; and to think she should ever—— Don’t—I think perhaps there might be reasons for our sakes, as she said. The property, you know, came from my grandfather to us. If he were known to have been alive, perhaps—I don’t know so much about business as I ought—perhaps—— It makes my head a little queer to think of all that. She might have reasons.”
“If it was simply for him, as she said first, to keep him from being sent to an asylum, it could not be for us as well.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” said Dolff stroking fondly, but with a very serious face, his youthful very light moustache, light both in color and texture.
“I have noticed in ladies,” said quick-witted Julia, “that they like to have a motive, don’t you know—something nice, as if they were always thinking of others, never of themselves; when they do anything, it’s always for their children. Mamma is not like that, to do her justice; when things are going on she says she likes it, not for us only. Oh, Dolff! to think of the parties and romps we have had this Christmas, and people coming to dinner, and him there all the while!”