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Updated: June 7, 2025
"All right, all right." "Got something to keep you quiet?" "Greek grammar." "Good man. Now then!" He plunged across the hall as though it were an icy bath. In the candle-lighted dining-room, Mildred Caniper sat by a wood fire. The table barricaded her from the four Canipers who sat and looked at her with serious eyes, and suddenly she found that she had very little to say.
Pinderwell smiled. It was after this visit that Mildred Caniper coolly asked Helen if Dr. Mackenzie were in the habit of using endearments towards her. "Not often," Helen said. Slightly flushed and trying not to laugh, she stood at the bed-foot and faced Mildred Caniper fairly. "You allow it?" "I like it." Mildred Caniper closed her eyes. "Please ask him not to do it in my presence."
Mildred Caniper, whose claim was great, came down to breakfast the next morning with a return of energy that gladdened Helen and set Miriam thinking swiftly of all the things she had left undone. But Mildred Caniper was fair, and where she no longer ruled, she would not criticize. She condescended, however, to ask one question. "Who was on the moor last night?" "Daniel," Helen said.
The wind was strong enough to lean against, stronger than man or anything he had made. Its freshness seemed to get beneath her skin, into her mind, to clean every part of her. Its action had a swiftness that prevented thought, and she was content to sit there till the doctor came, though the nurse had gone to bed in Christopher, and Mildred Caniper was alone.
Mildred Caniper, calm now, and dressed for her journey, had many instructions for Helen concerning food, the employment of Mrs. Samson, bills to be paid, and other domestic details which at this moment lacked reality. "And," she ended, "tell Rupert not to be late. The house should be locked up at ten o'clock."
"However " Mildred Caniper said at last, and set briskly to work, while Miriam disappeared into the shadows of the hall and Helen watched the flames playing round the kettle in which the water for Uncle Alfred's breakfast was bubbling. "How ill is he?" she asked. "Are you speaking of your father?" "Yes please." "I wish you would use names instead of pronouns. A good deal worse, I am afraid."
It might be that, for the first time, Mildred saw herself, looked into her own life and all the lives she knew, and gained a wider knowledge for the next. Nevertheless, it was horrible to Helen that Mildred Caniper had finally shut her eyes on the scene that killed her, and, for her last impression, had one of falsity and licence.
"Yes," Helen answered, but when she looked at her stepmother she could see only the distressed figure which had sat on the sofa, with hands jerking on its knee. Did she love Philip Caniper? Had they quarrelled long ago, and did she now want to make amends? No, no! She shut her eyes. She must not pry. She felt as though she had caught herself reading a letter which belonged to some one else.
"But she won't grow old," Helen said earnestly. "I don't believe she could grow old. It would be terrible." And it was of Mildred Caniper and not of herself she thought. Mildred Caniper was wearing her deaf expression when they went into the house, and getting supper ready as a form of reproof. John was another of her failures.
The dead, distant mother was not real to her: she was like the gay shadow of a butterfly that must soon die, and Philip Caniper was no more than a name. Their fate could hardly stir her, and their personal tragedy was done; but now she thought she could interpret the thoughts which clustered in the dining-room. This was Mildred Caniper's secret, and it had been told without shame.
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