“All this on account of a carpet. A palace carpet. Over which I had no control. I spoke my mind. He knew I knew of it. I never concealed it. So I was hunted. For years he had meditated revenge. Now he has it. But at what a cost! And they call him Emperor. Emperor!
“His arm is withered; his son—imbecile. He will die—without dignity. …”
Her voice weakened, but it was evident she wanted to say something more.
“I’m here,” said Mr. Britling. “Your nephew Hughie.”
She listened.
“Can you understand me?” he asked.
She became suddenly an earnest, tender human being. “My dear!” she said, and seemed to search for something in her mind and failed to find it.
“You have always understood me,” she tried.
“You have always been a good boy to me, Hughie,” she said, rather vacantly, and added after some moments of still reflection, “au fond.”
After that she was silent for some minutes, and took no notice of his whispers.
Then she recollected what had been in her mind. She put out a hand that sought for Mr. Britling’s sleeve.
“Hughie!”
“I’m here, Auntie,” said Mr. Britling. “I’m here.”
“Don’t let him get at your Hughie. … Too good for it, dear. Oh! much—much too good. … People let these wars and excitements run away with them. … They put too much into them. … They aren’t—they aren’t worth it. Don’t let him get at your Hughie.”
“No!”
“You understand me, Hughie?”
“Perfectly, Auntie.”
“Then don’t forget it. Ever.”
She had said what she wanted to say. She had made her testament. She closed her eyes. He was amazed to find this grotesque old creature had suddenly become beautiful, in that silvery vein of beauty one sometimes finds in very old men. She was exalted as great artists will sometimes exalt the portraits of the aged. He was moved to kiss her forehead.
There came a little tug at his sleeve.
“I think that is enough,” said the nurse, who had stood forgotten at his elbow.
“But I can come again?”
“Perhaps.”
She indicated departure by a movement of her hand.
§ 10
The next day Aunt Wilshire was unconscious of her visitor.
They had altered her position so that she lay now horizontally, staring inflexibly at the ceiling and muttering queer old disconnected things.
The Windsor Castle carpet story was still running through her mind, but mixed up with it now were scraps of the current newspaper controversies about the conduct of the war. And she was still thinking of the dynastic aspects of the war. And of spies. She had something upon her mind about the King’s more German aunts.
“As a precaution,” she said, “as a precaution. Watch them all. … The Princess Christian. … Laying foundation stones. … Cement. … Guns. Or else why should they always be laying foundation stones? … Always. … Why? … Hushed up. …
“None of these things,” she said, “in the newspapers. They ought to be.”
And then after an interval, very distinctly, “The Duke of Wellington. My ancestor—in reality. … Publish and be damned.”
After that she lay still. …
The doctors and nurses could hold out only very faint hopes to Mr. Britling’s inquiries; they said indeed it was astonishing that she was still alive.
And about seven o’clock that evening she died. …
§ 11
Mr. Britling, after he had looked at his dead cousin for the last time, wandered for an hour or so about the silent little watering-place before he returned to his hotel. There was no one to talk to and nothing else to do but to think of her death.
The night was cold and bleak, but full of stars. He had already mastered the local topography, and he knew now exactly where all the bombs that had been showered upon the place had fallen. Here was the corner of blackened walls and roasted beams where three wounded horses had been burnt alive in a barn, here the row of houses, some smashed, some almost intact, where a mutilated child had screamed for two hours before she could be rescued from the debris that had pinned her down, and taken to the hospital. Everywhere by the dim light of the shaded street lamps he could see the black holes and gaps of broken windows; sometimes abundant, sometimes rare and exceptional, among otherwise uninjured dwellings. Many of the victims he had visited in the little cottage hospital where Aunt Wilshire had just died. She was the eleventh dead. Altogether fifty-seven people had been killed or injured in this brilliant German action. They were all civilians, and only twelve were men.
Two zeppelins had come in from over the sea, and had been fired at by an antiaircraft gun coming on an automobile from Ipswich. The first intimation the people of the town had had of the raid was the report of this gun. Many had run out to see what was happening. It was doubtful if anyone had really seen the zeppelins, though everyone testified to the sound of their engines. Then suddenly the bombs had come streaming down. Only six had made hits upon houses or people; the rest had fallen ruinously and very close together on the local golf links, and at least half had not exploded at all and did not seem to have been released to explode.
A third at least of the injured people had been in bed when destruction came upon them.
The story was like a page from some fantastic romance of Jules Verne’s; the peace of the little old town, the people going to bed, the quiet streets, the quiet starry sky, and then for ten minutes an uproar of guns and shells, a clatter of breaking glass, and then a fire here, a fire there, a child’s voice pitched high by pain and terror, scared people going to and fro with lanterns, and the sky empty again, the raiders gone. …
Five minutes before, Aunt Wilshire had been sitting in the boardinghouse drawing-room
