Grey Roses | Page 5

talked in her presence quite as freely as he might
have talked had she been absent. As, in the greater number of his
theological, political, and social convictions, he was exceedingly
unorthodox, she heard a good deal, no doubt, that most of us would
scarcely consider edifying for our daughters' ears; but he had his
system, he knew what he was about. 'The question whether you can
touch pitch and remain undefiled,' he said, 'depends altogether upon the
spirit in which you approach it. The realities of the world, the realities
of life, the real things of God's universe--what have we eyes for, if not
to envisage them? Do so fearlessly, honestly, with a clean heart, and,
man or woman, you can only be the better for it.' Perhaps his system

was a shade too simple, a shade too obvious, for this complicated
planet; but he held to it in all sincerity. It was in pursuance of the same
system, I daresay, that he taught Nina to fence, and to read Latin and
Greek, as well as to play the piano, and turn an omelette. She could ply
a foil against the best of us.
And then, quite suddenly, he died.
I think it was in March, or April; anyhow it was a premature spring-like
day, and he had left off his overcoat. That evening he went to the
Odéon, and when, after the play he joined us for supper at the Bleu, he
said he thought he had caught a cold, and ordered hot grog. The next
day he did not turn up at all; so several of us, after dinner, presented
ourselves at his lodgings in Montparnasse. We found him in bed, with
Nina reading to him. He was feverish, and Nina had insisted that he
should stop at home. He would be all right to-morrow. He scoffed at
our suggestion that he should see a doctor; he was one of those men
who affect to despise the medical profession. But early on the
following morning a commissionnaire brought me a note from Nina.
'My father is very much worse. Can you come at once?' He was
delirious. Poor Nina, white, with frightened eyes, moved about like one
distracted. We sent off for Dr. Rénoult, we had in a Sister of Charity.
Everything that could be done was done. Till the very end, none of us
for a moment doubted that he would recover. It was impossible to
conceive that that strong, affirmative life could be extinguished. And
even after the end had come, the end with its ugly suite of material
circumstances, I don't think any of us realised what it meant. It was as
if we had been told that one of the forces of Nature had become
inoperative. And Nina, through it all, was like some pale thing in
marble, that breathed and moved: white, dazed, helpless, with aching,
incredulous eyes, suffering everything, understanding nothing.
When it came to the worst of the dreadful necessary businesses that
followed, some of us somehow, managed to draw her from the
death-chamber into another room, and to keep her there, while others of
us got it over. It was snowing that afternoon, I remember, a melancholy,
hesitating snowstorm, with large moist flakes that fluttered down

irresolutely, and presently disintegrated into rain; but we had not far to
go. Then we returned to Nina, and for many days and nights we never
dared to leave her. You will guess whether the question of her future,
especially of her immediate future, weighed heavily upon our minds. In
the end, however, it appeared to have solved itself--though I can't
pretend that the solution was exactly all we could have wished.
Her father had a half-brother (we learned this from his papers),
incumbent of rather an important living in the north of England. We
also learned that the brothers had scarcely seen each other twice in a
score of years, and had kept up only the most fitful correspondence.
Nevertheless, we wrote to the clergyman, describing the sad case of his
niece, and in reply we got a letter, addressed to Nina herself, saying
that of course she must come at once to Yorkshire, and consider the
rectory her home. I don't need to recount the difficulties we had in
explaining to her, in persuading her. I have known few more painful
moments than that when, at the Gare du Nord, half a dozen of us
established the poor, benumbed, bewildered child in her compartment,
and sent her, with our godspeed, alone upon her long journey--to her
strange kindred, and the strange conditions of life she would have to
encounter among them. From the Café Bleu to a Yorkshire parsonage!
And Nina's was not by any means a neutral personality, nor her mind a