“Our afternoons will be our pleasantest times,” she said. “There is so much to be done in the mornings, but in the afternoons we can have long talks, and I can amuse you with some of the school-life stories. I have something quite interesting to tell you to-day, and I have brought up a book which I should like to read to you, that is, if you are inclined to listen. And, oh, mother, I think you would like this new sort of fancy work. I have got all the materials for it. It would make some charming ornamental work for the drawing room. We ought to make the drawing room pretty by the time you come back to it.”
“Oh, but I shall never come back to it,” said Mrs Aldworth.
“Indeed you will, and very soon too. I’m not going to allow you to be long in this bedroom. You will be downstairs again in a few days.”
“Never,” said Mrs Aldworth.
“Indeed you will. And anyhow we ought to have the drawing room pretty now that Molly and Ethel are out – or consider themselves so. And, mother, dear,” – Marcia’s voice assumed a new and serious tone – “I have so much to talk to you about the dear girls.”
Mrs Aldworth trembled. Now, indeed, was the moment when she ought to begin, but somehow, try as she would, she found it impossible to be cross with Marcia. Still, the memory of Molly and her wrongs, of Nesta, and the burden she was unexpectedly forced to carry, of Ethel, and her tendency to sunstroke, came over her.
“Before you say anything, I must be frank,” she said.
“Oh, yes, mother; that’s what I should like, and expect,” said Marcia, not losing any of her cheerfulness, but laying down her work and preparing herself to listen.
She did not stare as her young sisters would have done, for she knew that Mrs Aldworth hated being stared at. She only glanced now and then, and her look was full of sympathy, and there was not a trace of anger on her face.
“You really are very nice, Marcia; there’s no denying it. I do wish that in some ways – not perhaps in looks, but in some ways, that my girls were more like you. But, dear, this is it – are you not a little hard on them? They’re so young.”
“So young?” said Marcia. “Molly is eighteen. She is only two years younger than I am.”
“But you will be twenty-one in three months’ time.”
“I think, mother, if you compare birthdays, you will find that Molly will be nineteen in four months’ time. There is little more than two years between us.”
Mrs Aldworth was always irritated when opposed.
“That’s true,” she said. “But don’t quibble, Marcia; that is a very disagreeable trait in any girl, particularly when she is addressing a woman so much older than herself. The girls are younger than you, not only in years but in character.”
“That I quite corroborate,” said Marcia firmly.
“Why do you speak in that tone, as though you were finding fault with them, poor darlings, for being young and sweet and childish, and innocent?”
“Mother,” said Marcia, and now she rose from her seat and dropped on her knees by the invalid’s couch, “do you think that I really blame them for being young and innocent? But I do blame them for something else.”
“And what is that?”
“For being selfish: for thinking of themselves more than for others.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“If you will consider for a moment I think you will quite understand what I mean.”
“Marcia, my head aches; I cannot stand a long argument.”
“Nor will I give it to you. I have come back here to help you – ”
“Why, of course, you were sent for for that purpose.”
Marcia felt a very fierce wave of passion rising for a moment in her heart. After all, she had her passions, her strong feelings, her idiosyncrasies. She was not tame; she was not submissive; hers was a firm, steadfast, reliable nature. Hers also was a proud and rebellious one. Nevertheless, she soon conquered the rising irritation. She knew that this bad hour would have to be lived through.
“I am glad you are talking to me quite plainly,” she said, “and I on my part will answer you in the same spirit. I have come back here not because I must, for as a matter of fact, I am my own mistress. You see, by my own dear mother’s will I have sufficient money of my own – not a great deal, but enough to support me. I can, therefore, be quite independent; and the fact that by my mother’s will I was made of age at twenty, puts all possibility of misconstruction of my meaning out of the question.”
“Marcia, you are so terribly learned; you use such long words; you talk as though you were forty. Now, my poor children – ”
“Mother, you are quite a clever woman yourself, and of course you know what I mean. I have come back to help you, because I wished to – not because I was forced to do so.”
“Molly says you are terribly conceited; I am afraid she is right.”
Marcia took no notice of this.
“Although I have come back to help you, I have not come back to ruin my young sisters.”
“Now, Marcia, you really are talking the wildest nonsense.”
“Not at all. Don’t you want them to love you?”
Mrs Aldworth burst into tears.
“What a dreadful creature you are,” she said. “As though my own sweet children did not love me. Why, they’re madly devoted to me. If my little finger aches they’re in such a state – you never knew anything like it. I have seen my poor Molly obliged to rush from the room when I have been having a bad attack of my neuralgia, just because her own precious nerves could not stand the agony. Not love me? How dare you insinuate such a thing?”
“Mother, we evidently have different ideas with regard to love. My idea is this – that you ought to sacrifice yourself for the one you love. Now, if I came here and took the complete charge of you away from your own daughters; if I gave them nothing whatever to do for you, and if they were to spend their entire time amusing themselves, and not once considering you, I should do them a cruel wrong; I should injure their characters, and I should make them, what they are already inclined to be – most terribly selfish. That, God helping me, I will not do. I will share the charge of you with them, or I will return to Frankfort to Mrs Silchester, whom I love; to the life that I delight in; to the friends I have made. I will not budge an inch; I will nurse you with the girls, or not at all.”
Mrs Aldworth looked up. After all, with a captious, fretful, irritable invalid, a woman with so vacillating a nature as Mrs Aldworth’s, there was nothing so effective as firmness. She succumbed. In a minute she had flung her arms round Marcia’s neck.
“My darling,” she said, “I do see what you mean. And you are right; you will train them, you will be, in my absence, a mother to them.”
“Not a mother, for I, like them, am young; but I will be to them an elder sister, and I will teach them – not in words, but by precept and by sympathy and by love, what I should like them to learn. They want a great deal of looking after; and, first of all, they want a complete change in their method of living.”
“I am afraid even for them, and for you, I cannot quite ignore my pain, my constant suffering, my weary nights, my long, long, fatiguing days.”
“Of course you cannot, and I have said enough for the present. Now, let us have a jolly time. See, I am going to have a particularly nice tea for you this afternoon. I have told Susan to bring it up when it is ready. We’ll have it on that balcony.”
“Oh, but I shall catch cold.”
“Indeed you won’t. Do you see that shady corner, and