Page 46 of Threads that Remain

“I know,” said Henry. “Papa told me.” He was silent. “It is a nice thing to be told.”

They talked for the best part of an hour.

They spoke of a great many things, some large, and some so small that afterwards neither of them could remember how they had begun. Henry wished to know whether Mr. Willoughby could ride; and it appeared, by what he was told, that Mr. Willoughby was reckoned the best horseman in three counties, and had been thrown off a young grey mare, in the year eleven, into the middle of a pond. He wished to know whether he fished, and was told that he did, with a fly, and that there was a very good pool at Combe Magna below the mill. He asked about the house; he asked about the dogs. He learned that Mrs. Willoughby played the harp abominably and could not be prevented; that Madeline had once put a frog in his hat; that the Captain, in his fifth year, had fallen into a millstream, and been fished out by the gardener’s boy, and had said, upon being asked what he meant by it, that he was investigating.

It came out of Willoughby in a flood. He had not intended it. It seemed, when he had begun, that there was nothing whatever in the world that he could not tell that solemn, attentive, dark-eyed child; and he found himself describing the whole of his life, from the hunting-field to the nursery, in the most affectionate and comical detail, with his hands and his face, as he used to tell things when he was a young man, and had a room full of people laughing; and the child was soon laughing too. It was a small, delighted, spluttering, unguarded laugh. It was, he saw, the laugh that he had seen from the far side of a pond.

“I say,” said Henry. “That is very funny. Did the frog really go in the hat?”

“With the greatest conscientiousness.”

“And what did you say?”

“I do not think I said much, but there was a great deal of chasing round the garden involved,” said Willoughby.

There was, in the neighbourhood of the door that led into the next room, a small click.

It was a very slight sound. It came from the direction of the panel, and it was followed by a longer creak; and the two on the hearthrug turned their heads together, and stared, with the same movement, at a door that had been ajar for some minutes and had now, by a slow and deliberate progress, opened about four inches. Through the gap there had emerged, very quietly, the mouth of a large brass ear-trumpet.

“Is that —” said Willoughby.

“That is Aunt Smith,” said Henry. “She said she would not say a word.”

“I am not saying a word,” said the ear-trumpet, in a hoarse, hard, carrying voice.

Henry gave a shout of laughter; Willoughby, who had gone the colour of a boiled beet, sat in shocked silence. The door opened, and at the end of the trumpet, with the movement of a battleship coming about, there advanced into the library a small upright black-clad figure with a stick, who fixed upon the person in the leather chair a pair of pale, hard, unblinking eyes, and stopped.

“Well, sir,” said Mrs. Smith.

He had risen. It was the first time in his life, so far as he could recall, that he had ever done so with an entire want of grace. He stood, very straight, with his hands at his sides, in front of the old woman whose house he had once lived in, and whose money he had once counted upon, and whose name, in that same house, he had for twelve years been unable to hear without flinching; and it seemed to him, in that instant, that he was fourteen years old, and had been caught with a cricket bat in the conservatory.

“Aunt,” said Willoughby.

“I have not addressed a word to you,” said Mrs. Smith, “for twelve years.”

“No, ma’am.”

“I do not know that I should now, if it were not for the boy.” She thumped her stick. “Sit down. You look like a sheet on a hedge.” He sat. She did not; she remained standing, in the middle of the carpet, with both hands on the head of the stick, and a look of implacable and searching severity, and it was perhaps a full minute before she said, in a much lower voice:

“You have not been a good man.”

“No, ma’am.”

“I do not say you cannot begin. I have known a great many people who could not, and one or two who did. But you have wasted twelve years, and I do not suppose that you have more than another twenty-five.” She paused. “You may have noticed that you are not in my will.”

“I have known it these twelve years.”

“You will not be. You do not need it; you have a wife with fifty thousand pounds, and you have the sense, I gather, to be grateful. That is the only creditable thing I have heard of you.” She drew a long breath. “I have made a provision for the boy. That is my affair. You will not ask me about it, and you will not be told. But I say this to you, John. If ever, in the whole of your life, you do that child an unkindness, in word or deed or omission; if I hear that you have once broken a promise to him, or made him wait, or let him down — I shall not need a will. I shall get up out of my grave and come and see you.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Willoughby.

“Then that is understood.” She looked at him a moment longer; and then, in the most unexpected manner, her face changed. It did not soften, quite; it was rather as if a very hard bit of stone had, for the space of a second, been touched by the light. “You have done tolerably today,” said Mrs. Smith, briskly. “I listened to the whole of it. I heard every word; I am not as deaf as they suppose. It was a very good hour. I shall say no more.”

She turned, and stumped across the room, and took Henry, who had got up from the carpet, by the ear.

“And as for you, sir, you are to stop laughing. It is not respectful to your father.”

“Which one?” said Henry, innocently.