Peter and Jane; Or, The Missing Heir

by S. Macnaughtan

'Perhaps it would be as well to lock up anything that is lying about,' said the doctor; 'it is customary to do so. Or your lawyer—who, I understand, is in the house—could come in, I suppose, and put away jewels, etc.' He handed Peter the litter of notes and papers on the writing-table.

'Thank you,' said Peter. 'I don't suppose there is anything very important, but I will look through them presently.' He glanced at the topmost addresses of the notes, and decided that they were probably belated wedding invitations to people who had been forgotten, and he put an indiarubber band about them and thrust them into his pocket.

The guests in the house departed hurriedly within two hours of Mrs. Ogilvie's death, amidst all the confusion of hasty packing, and carriages ordered for this person and for that, and footmen hastening downstairs with luggage, and luncheon prepared hurriedly and eaten almost surreptitiously by those who wished to catch an early train. There was a horrible stir in the house under the hush and awe that death brings. No one wished to intrude upon Peter; yet a dozen friends wanted to see him, to hear, if possible, more details of his mother's sudden end. Others, with a sort of animal instinct of forsaking at once the place where death reigned, betrayed an almost contemptible haste in quitting the house; but they, too, must know all that could be told. They had never noticed that Mrs. Ogilvie did not seem well, or they had remarked that of late she had spent much time in her room, or 'she had seemed so bright and cheerful'; and, again, 'they had noticed how tired she had been at night sometimes.'

To no one had Peter any special news to give. Some one had heard, he believed, that she had been to see Sir Edward Croft, the great surgeon in London, and to-day they had telegraphed to him. Peter himself had not really been anxious about his mother, although he had imagined for some time past that she did not look well. He gave what attention he could to his guests, bade them a conventional good-bye, and displayed that reserve which an Englishman is supposed to be able to maintain in times of sorrow. But it is not too much to say that, warm-hearted, deeply affectionate man that he was, his grief for his mother's death had something bewildering in it. He had loved her faithfully and admired her loyally during the whole of his life; there had never been a quarrel between them, and, if he had not received many outward marks of affection from her, there was no single occasion in his life that he could remember in which she had failed him. He had come first always; he realized this with the sinking of heart which even the most dutiful son may feel when he sees with absolute clearness, perhaps for the first time, that he must have accepted, almost unknowingly, many sacrifices from his mother. He hoped, with a boyish remorse and a boyish simple-heartedness, that she understood everything now, and that somewhere, not very far off, she would be able to see into his heart and know positively how much he had loved her. He had always accepted in simple faithfulness the statement that those who were gone 'knew now,' as the phrase runs; and it comforted him to think that all he might have said to her when she was alive was clearly understood by his mother at last.

By two o'clock the big house was empty of guests and given over to silence, or to the sound of hushed footsteps about the stairs, or to the weeping of maids as they assembled in little groups in the corridors and spoke with sobs of the mistress whom they had served faithfully. Each room that had lately given up its tenant showed a disordered interior, with paper strewn here and there. Or some maid left behind to pack her mistress's heavier luggage could be seen kneeling before open trunks and deftly arranging their contents.

A grey-haired butler approached his master when the last of the carriages had driven away, and begged him to eat some luncheon, and informed him that Miss Erskine was still in the library.

'Send something there,' said Peter briefly.

For a moment Jane could only weep, and they clung to each other, saying, with the helplessness of the suddenly bereaved, 'Isn't it awful?' Then, as they began to grow calmer, Peter administered what comfort he could, and tried in his kindly way to induce the girl to eat something.

'You must eat, you know,' he said, 'and it will do you good. It has been a terrible time for you. And then I think you ought to go back and lie down for a bit.'

If it is true that a woman suggests beef-tea as a universal panacea for all ills, it is certain, on the other hand, that a man believes that a woman always feels better for lying down.