‘They should not keep their father waiting,’ said Eleanor, moving to the bell. ‘They must not take your attention as a matter of course. Why should you think about them?’
Fulbert could produce no reason why he should give a thought to his offspring, and the summons brought them running downstairs in a manner that suggested that this was not a mutual attitude.
‘Why are you so late?’ said Eleanor. ‘I should have thought you would be anxious to start, when you were to go out with Father.’
‘We have been ready for some time,’ said Venice. ‘We did not know when we were to come down.’
‘Oh, that is what it was. Well, another time it will be better to be in the hall. Then there will be no question about your being ready and waiting.’
The capacity for waiting assumed in the children, perhaps without much attention to heredity, was proved for some minutes longer; and then the party set off, with the girls on their father’s arms, and James capering about them in a manner that baulked their progress and brought him steady reproof, but was the only means by which he could join the talk.
‘Well, so you are glad to be rid of your father,’ said Fulbert.
‘No,’ said Venice, with the strong protest suggested.
‘No,’ said Isabel, in a weaker tone and with the tears filling her eyes. She depended on her father and dreaded the house without him.
‘No,’ said James, in a tone that seemed an echo of the others.
‘We shall write to each other, you and I,’ said Fulbert, pressing Isabel’s arm. ‘Every week a letter will come for you, and nobody else shall read it.’
Isabel appeared as gratified as if this were a possible prospect, and her sister looked baffled by the comparative failure of her own more normal effort.
‘You shall share the letter,’ said Fulbert, with no feeling that his first promise was affected. ‘I shall write a letter to my two middle girls, and it shall be just for themselves. Unless they like to show it to Mother.’
James curveted in the consciousness evoked by being left out of the attention, which indeed was becoming general.
‘It shall be for my boy too,’ promised Fulbert, with a sense purely of further magnanimity. ‘My schoolroom party shall have their own letter, and show it to everyone else at their own discretion.’
A tendency to frolic indicated the view of this prospect.
‘Don’t be always under my boots, my boy,’ said Fulbert, throwing up his feet to render this position untenable, and also slightly painful.
‘What is it like in South America?’ said Venice.
‘Now you are putting the cart before the horse. This is the wrong occasion for that question. I like to give you that sort of information at first hand.’
‘Grandpa knows,’ said James. ‘He said that the trees and flowers were quite different.’
‘It can hardly be as it was when he was there,’ said Fulbert, not surrendering the position of coming authority, though the changes might hardly extend to the vegetation. ‘You must wait for my return.’
‘Don’t walk in front of me, James,’ said Venice, in an amiable tone.
‘Nor of me,’ said Isabel, speaking with more sharpness.
‘Keep to the side, my boy,’ said Fulbert. ‘What exactly do you want to know? Tell me and I will remember.’
James was obliged to return to his place to make this clear, and Fulbert paused and listened with patience, before he allowed the party to proceed.
‘What does Isabel want to hear about South America?’ he said, in a gentle tone. ‘That the whole continent is at the bottom of the sea?’
‘Yes,’ said Isabel, quickening her pace.
Fulbert bent and whispered in her ear, and Venice suffered from her failure to produce feelings on the unknown continent on this scale.
‘Do countries have the sea underneath them?’ said James. ‘Or does the land go right through?’
‘It is the sea above them that Isabel wants,’ said his father.
‘But do they really, I mean?’
‘People’s thoughts and feelings are just as real, my boy.’
‘Yes,’ said James, in a lighter tone.
‘Now we will all race to that tree and back,’ said Fulbert, deciding that interest and entertainment should remain in his children’s memory. ‘Take your stand and start fair. We must all run right round it.’
The children braced themselves for the effort, James in a serious spirit, Venice in a semi-serious one, and Isabel with an appearance of sprightly interest which she could hardly feel, as she was of weaker build than the others, and though unconcerned for success in the contest, counted the cost of her father’s sympathy.
‘Well done, Venice!’ said Fulbert, as he reached the goal, second to his daughter and a tie with his son, but prevented from yielding a place to his other daughter by the transparence of the manoeuvre. ‘Well done, my boy. And so my Isabel is last, and tired into the bargain.’
‘I am a poor athlete, Father.’
‘Are you, my dear?’ said Fulbert, putting his cheek against hers. ‘Your strength has gone into other things, Better ones for your father.’
Venice again had a feeling that she met the more ordinary kinds of success. It was hardly weakened when Fulbert gave a shilling to each of them, in reward for their respective achievements. When the walk was over, it was found that it had occupied an hour. Fulbert and James would have guessed it an hour and a half, Venice somewhat longer, and Isabel had lost all count of time. Eleanor came into the hall to receive them.
‘Why, Father looks quite tired, and so do you, Isabel. He has some reason, with the weight of two of you on him, but you seem to tire very easily.’ Eleanor was at once moved and vexed by sign of weakness in her children; it seemed to threaten her possession of them. ‘Venice looks as fresh as when she started. I think Isabel is depressed by the thought of your going, Fulbert.’
Isabel turned at once to the staircase; Venice followed in a rather disheartened manner; and James gave a jump and looked up at his mother.
‘We had a race, and Venice won, and I was second, and Father gave us all a shilling.’
‘That was a treat, wasn’t it? But all this running and jumping for a little boy who cannot go to school! What does that mean, do you think? And now you had better all be off to the schoolroom. We don’t want tears and tiredness on Father’s last days.’
The children, uncertain of their mother’s exact leanings, went upstairs, and Fulbert entered his study and threw himself into a chair.
‘You know, Eleanor, or rather I suppose you do not, that you treat your children as if they were men and women.’ Fulbert had a right to make this criticism, as he did not fall into the error.
‘I am simply myself with them. It is best to be natural with children.’
‘You overdo it, my dear. You prevent them from being the same. And each child needs a separate touch and a separate understanding.’
‘I doubt the wisdom of making any sort of difference.’
‘It needs to be done in a certain way,’ said Fulbert, feeling that there was an example before his wife.
Eleanor gave a little laugh.
‘I wonder you like to leave them with their feeble mother.’
‘You are not without support, my dear.’
‘I feel I could not leave them for any reason.’
‘It is a good thing I can do so for the right ones. I am going for their sakes. I am sure you will give yourself to them. I can only put you in my place.’