CHAPTER XXVII

Miss Carmagee sat crying at the breakfast-table over a letter that she held in her fat, white hand. It was a letter from Catherine, and told of the last resting-place of Gwen, a narrow bed of clay amid white headstones on the Wilson hills. She had been reading the letter aloud to her brother, whose face was a study in the irritable suppression of his feelings.

“Damn that bird!”

The canary in its cage by the window was filling the room with shivers of shrill sound. Porteus pushed his chair back, jerked an antimacassar from the sofa, and flung it over the bird’s cage.

“Go on, dear, go on. I am expecting Dixon to see me in ten minutes.”

Miss Carmagee wiped her spectacles, and blundered on brokenly through the letter. There were eight pages, closely written, and whether it was the indistinctness of Catherine’s writing, or the dimness of Miss Carmagee’s eyes, the old lady’s progress was sluggish in the extreme. She had forgotten to add milk to her untasted cup of tea, and the rashers of bacon on her plate were congealing into unappetizing grease.

Porteus sat fidgeting at the far end of the table. The vitality of his interest betrayed itself in a frowning and jerky spirit of impatience.

“Well, what are they going to do now, eh? Stay on and lose the boy? Murchison ought to have more sense.”

Miss Carmagee’s eyes had assumed an expression of moist surprise behind her spectacles. She appeared to be digesting some unexpected piece of news in silence, and with the amiable forgetfulness of a lethargic mind.

Porteus had handed her his empty cup. Some seconds elapsed before his sister noticed the intrusion of the china.

“Dear, what a coincidence!”

She took the cup and filled it mechanically, her eyes still fixed upon the letter.

“Well, what is it?”

“If only it had happened earlier, the money would have been of use.”

Mr. Porteus betrayed the natural impatience of the energetic male.

“Bless my soul, are you contriving a monopoly?”

Miss Carmagee lifted her mild spectacles to her brother’s face.

“Mrs. Pentherby is dead,” she said.

“Dead!”

“Yes.”

“No extreme loss to the community. Ah—would you—!” and he cast a threatening glance in the direction of the bird-cage at the sound of an insinuating “tweet.” “Well, what about the money?”

The lawyer’s eyes twinkled as though Mrs. Pentherby’s dividends were more interesting than her person.

“She has left nearly all her money and her furniture to Catherine. She died the very same day as Gwen.”

“Pity it wasn’t six months ago. The old lady had some first-class china, and a few fine pictures. Does Catherine say how much?”

“How much what, Porteus?”

“Money, my dear, money.”

“I don’t think she says.”

Her brother pushed back his chair, and glanced briskly at his watch.

“I’ll take it with me,” he said, stretching out a brown and energetic hand for the letter.

“I haven’t quite finished it, Porteus.”

“Never mind; there’s your breakfast getting cold. You had better have some fresh tea made.”

His sister surrendered the letter with a spirit of amiable self-negation.

“The money ought to make a difference to them,” she said, softly, taking off her spectacles and wiping them with slow, pensive hands.

“Money always makes a difference, my dear, especially when people are heroically proud.”

Miss Phyllis Carmagee’s thoughts were towards that gray-skied, slaving, sordid town where Gwen was buried, as she sipped her tea and looked at her brother’s empty chair. She was a woman whom many of her neighbors thought stolid and reserved, a woman not gifted with great powers of self-expression. Friendship with many is a mere gratification of the social ego. The vivacious people who delight in conversationalism, take pleasure in those personalities that are new and pleasing for the moment, even as they are interested in new and complex flowers. To Phyllis Carmagee, however, her friends had more of the enduring dearness of familiar trees. They were part of her consciousness, part of her daily and her yearly life.

Porteus’s sister came by an idea as she sat alone at the breakfast-table that morning. Serene and obese natures are slow in conceiving, yet the concept may have the greater stability for the very slowness of the progress. The crystallization of that idea went on all day, till it was ready to be displayed in its completeness to her brother as he dined. Miss Carmagee had decided to go down to Wilton, and to show that her friendship was worth a long day’s journey. A sentimental and unctuous letter would have sufficed for a mere worldling. But Porteus Carmagee’s sister had that rare habit of being loyal and sincere.

“I should like to see the child’s grave,” she said, quietly, her round, white face very soft and gentle in the light of the shaded lamp; “it seems hard to realize that the little thing is dead. Gwen meant so much to her father. I wonder what they are going to do.”

Porteus Carmagee stared hard at the silver epergne full of daffodils before him on the table. They were at dessert, and alone, with the curtains drawn, and a wood fire burning in the old-fashioned grate. The whole setting of the room spoke of a generation that was past. It suggested solidity and repose, placid kindliness, prosaic comfort.

“Murchison ought never to have left us,” said the lawyer, curtly.

“No.”

“The affair might have blown over in a year.”

“You think so, Porteus.”

“If he had only stuck to his guns. People always wait to see what a man will do. If he skedaddles they draw their own inferences. Life is largely a game of bluff.”

The eyes of brother and sister met in a sudden questioning glance. Possibly the same thought had occurred to both.

“Would it be possible?”

“Possible for what?”

“For James Murchison to come back to Roxton?”

The lawyer reached for his napkin that had slipped down from his knees.

“That is the question,” he confessed, “it is not easy to rebuild a reputation. I would rather face fire than the sneers of my genteel neighbors.”

Miss Carmagee’s placid face had lost its habitual air of contentment and repose.

“I know it would require courage,” she said.

“People would probably call it impertinence. It requires more than courage to be successfully impertinent in this world.”

“Cleverness, Porteus?”

“Genius, the genius of patience, magnanimity, and self-restraint.”

His sister pondered a moment, while Porteus sipped his port.

“Then—there is Catherine?”

Her brother’s keen eyes lit up at the name.

“Ah, there we have a touch of the divine fire.”

“She could help him.”

“Next to God.”

There was silence again between them for a season. The dim and homely room seemed full of a quiet dignity, a pervading restfulness that was clean and good. The most prosaic people grow great and lovable when their hearts are moved to succor others. The words of a beggar may strike the noblest chords of time, and live with the utterances of martyrs and of prophets.

“Porteus.”

Brother and sister looked at each other.

“I might speak to them.”

“Perhaps, dear, better than any one.”

“And if they need money? Mrs. Pentherby’s property cannot come to them at once. The law—”

Porteus’s face twinkled benignantly.

“The law, like a mule, is abominably slow. If I can be of any use to them—remind Kate that I am still alive.”

Miss Carmagee regarded her brother affectionately across the table.

“Then I shall go to-morrow,” she said, with a quiet sigh.