“No, it is improbable that we shall have tidings of any kind for a long time. I have told you so, again and again. Don’t you understand that the seasons are different down there?”
“Yes, miss, so you did mention to my husband.”
“Down there the winter is beginning. The ship that has gone to look for Mr. Anthony will encounter frozen seas. Mr. Anthony’s own ship—unless he has already got away—will be fast in the ice. If so, he cannot be expected at any navigable port until the autumn.”
It was just the same with those old servants at the house. Talking to her of Master Anthony they spoke, as their master did, nearly always of his youth. Hannah, standing with Emmie in his dressing-room, pointed down into the walled garden and said how when he was quite a little chap, and she herself a young girl, he had a lovely black velvet suit with a lace collar; and wearing this much admired costume, he lay upon the grass down there on an April day. Then a sharp shower began; but Master Anthony, never seeming to notice the downpour, still lay there, till he was wet through and through. “Oh, there was a to-do, for fear he should take cold.” Everybody in the house had loved the child.
All this was naturally put by Hannah into the past tense; but Emmie, wincing, noticed that Hannah still used the same tense as she went on to speak of later days, when she said how it was his kindness, his unfailing kindness, that had won the hearts not only of the tenants but of every man and woman for miles round.
“Yes,” said Hannah finally, with a sigh, “he was a kind gentleman.”
“He is a kind gentleman,” said Miss Verinder. “And a great hero too. As you’ll say, when he comes home and all the world is praising him.”
“I’m sure we do hope so, miss.”
But she knew that they merely acted hope; they had no hope, truly. She ceased to talk to them in the friendly open way that had become habitual. She let the house itself talk to her about him, and not its servants.