23 August 1805, cont'd.
“LIZZY, DEAREST,” MY BROTHER EDWARD SAID, AS WE were settled into our carriage some hours later, “I quite liked the Gentleman Improver. He is a man of information and taste.”
“Not at all what one would expect of Eastwell Park,” Lizzy replied.
“Then perhaps he shall prove the salvation of it. Did you admire his plans?”
“—The cunning little Blue Book? I thought it quite ravishing, Neddie. I long to have one of my own.”
“How delightful. Then you will not object if he rides over to Godmersham one day or another?”
“I object to nothing, provided he leaves our avenue in peace.”
“Excellent,” Neddie returned comfortably. “I invited him for Sunday. We have never very much to do then, as you know, and might as well spend it in walking about the park as not.”
Lizzy settled back against the seat cushions, a dim perfection in the wan moonlight creeping into the carriage; only the creak of the springs and the steady beat of the horses' hooves served to disturb the darkness.
“And you, Jane?” Neddie enquired at length. “Do you despise Mr. Sothey as much as Humphrey Repton?”
“I cannot despise a man of whom I know so little.”
“Then this is indeed a reformed Jane!” Henry cried. “I have known you to despise an hundred such at first meeting, for nothing more than a poorly-turned phrase.”
“Jane is always cautious when she possesses a dangerous knowledge,” Lizzy observed from her corner. “She has detected Mr. Sothey in an indiscretion.”
“Have you?” Neddie's voice acquired something more of interest. “Then pray offer it to the general view. My work as Justice should be nothing at all, without a few well-placed indiscretions.”
And so I related not only the history of Mrs. Grey's riding crop, but also of Mr. Brett's dubious intelligence regarding the woman in The Larches stableyard, and Sothey's disheveled arrival at Eastwell the evening of the race-meeting.
“You employed your time to better effect than I,” my brother observed drily, “for all I learned from Sothey was that he has no interest in the Gothic, and finds the Hermit Cottage a wretched addition to the body of landscape architecture. But how ought we to regard this … indiscretion, if such it should be called? For as you have noted, Jane — the man should hardly have strangled Mrs. Grey in a fit of passion, did he precipitate a break in the first place. From your description of the lady's whip-hand, I should rather have expected to find Sothey stripped to his small clothes in Collingforth's chaise, than Mrs. Grey herself.”
“Collingforth's chaise,” Henry broke in. “Might it not have been Sothey the stable lad saw, entering the carriage?”
“We cannot judge the particulars on so slight an impression,” I countered, “nor yet on the evidence of a man like Mr. Brett. He is consumed by the desire to injure a rival — and jealousy working on a weak mind may produce every sort of evil. We must divine the truth as best we can. A direct approach to Sothey, however, is impossible at present; let it suffice to know him better by degrees.”
“Unhappily, we lack sufficient time,” Neddie said briskly. “Denys Collingforth is fled, and cannot feel the hangman's rope; but if I am not to appear a fool before my neighbours, and the Lord Lieutenant of Kent himself, I must conclude the matter swiftly. I would not have Collingforth charged guilty in Sothey's place — however charming the fellow's Blue Books — if he is guilty of having strangled Mrs. Grey.”
Trust Neddie to place his finger on the point.
“Then I would advise a visit to The Larches' stable-yard,” I told him. “One groom or another may have observed something to our advantage — Sothey's assignation with the unknown lady, or perhaps Mrs. Grey's discovery of it later.”
“Indeed,” Neddie said thoughtfully. “And as we are to pay our call of condolence at The Larches on the morrow, perhaps you, Henry, might manage a visit to the stables — being a notable devotee of the turf. I might profitably occupy Mr. Grey's attention, while you interrogate the grooms.”
But all thought of Mr. Sothey and The Larches was driven from our heads at our return to Godmersham. A constable had been stationed in the central hall some hours, patiently awaiting our arrival; and the news he bore was shocking in the extreme.
Denys Gollingforth had been found along the London road, a few miles from the town of Deal. His throat had been cut, his pockets emptied, and his body sunk with a stone at the bottom of a millpond. Two unfortunate boys, intent upon a swim, had discovered him there — to the horror of their mothers, and the routing of their sleep.
Saturday,
24 August 1805
MY OWN REPOSE WAS SIMILARLY BANISHED, AS THO' A spectral presence hovered about the bed curtains, its wakeful eye trained upon my tossing form. Lord Harold paraded through my dreams, arrayed in court dress and apparently deprived of the power of speech; my father, too, appeared as he had been in my earliest youth — a laughing, lively fellow who talked enough for ten. Perhaps it was his voice that so consumed Lord Harold's; he persisted in reading aloud from Oliver Goldsmith, to the persecution of my senses. I threw back the bedcovers at last, and sat up in the darkness; the great house was utterly still, but for the settling groan of its deepest timbers, and the whisper of a mouse in the wainscotting.
Had Lord Harold prevailed in Vienna? Was he even now upon the wing of his return? Were we likely ever to meet again?
And what of his intimate friend, Mr. Emilious Finch-Hatton? A curious, deceptive, and engaging fellow. He had undertaken to sound my depths, during the course of dinner, for purposes as yet obscure; but I should dearly love to know his meaning. Besieged as he was with convivial relations, Mr. Emilious was unlikely to ride over from Eastwell before Monday, when I should be gone to Goodnestone Farm; that was most unlucky. I must put the gentleman and his intrigues entirely out of my mind.
Having done so, however, I found sleep no less destroyed by thought. From Eastwell Park it was but a step to our arrival at Godmersham, and the shocking intelligence of Collingforth's murder that had greeted us; and on this, my mind might well be occupied for the remainder of the night. Who had done away with Denys Collingforth? A footpad, encountered at random along the London road? The unsavoury black-clad friend, Mr. Everett, who had vanished from Canterbury without a trace? Or the self-same person who had struck down Mrs. Grey?
For that Collingforth had never strangled the lady was my heartfelt conviction; his own sudden death was too implausible in the event. He had been killed to ensure his silence, perhaps — or by an avenging hand, that could not feel certain he would hang. And of a sudden, I remembered Mr. Valentine Grey's hasty departure for London Thursday night, the very eve of his wife's interment — an extraordinary journey, conceived on the spur of a messenger's summons. Had the man been paid to shadow Denys Collingforth? And having found him, rode like the wind to inform his master, Mr. Grey?
Was it Grey's hand that had slit Collingforth's throat, and weighted his body for the millpond?
The hope of sleep could not lie in such a direction; only one remedy could commend itself. With a sigh of despair I took up my candle, opened the bedchamber door, and lit my wick from the taper left burning all night in the hall. No other recourse was left me: I must immerse myself in the pages of Werther, until utter insensibility should descend.
MY BROTHER NEDDIE WAS AFOOT ALMOST BEFORE THE first light had broken. I was roused from my slumber by the sound of men shouting, and the clatter of horses' hooves. When I dashed to my bedroom window, it was to survey a scene of ordered chaos in the stable area below. The rain had commenced once more in earnest, and was driving down in great tearing sheets that churned the yard to mud. Neddie was mounted and intent upon his departure, Henry was being heaved into the saddle by an under-groom, and Mrs. Salkeld stood in their midst holding aloft a swinging lantern. Neddie took from her outstretched hand a steaming cup of what could only be coffee, returned it with thanks, and wheeled his horse.
They would be bound for Deal, some ten miles distant, and a small coaching inn called the Hoop & Griffin, where Denys Collingforth lay cold and lifeless on a bare plank table. Then there would be the tedious work of informing the coroner, settling a date for the inquest, and visiting the thankful widow — conducted in all the mire of dirt and wet. Later should come the hours of fruidess questions, the vexation of never putting name or face to the man's murderer.
I shuddered, and went back to bed.
“I BEG YOUR PARDON, MISS AUSTEN,” ANNE SHARPE SAID from the open doorway some hours later, “but I could not help enquiring — your visit to the Finch-Hattons was pleasant, I hope?”
Tho' the governess could know nothing of the death of Denys Collingforth — having already retired by the late hour of our return, and being unlikely to have encountered anyone charged with the intelligence before breakfast — a feverish light animated her countenance. Her hazel eyes were too large in her white face.
“Pray come in, my dear, and sit down,” I cried. 'You look decidedly unwell. I am sure you must have passed a wretched night!”
“I… that is to say, the ill effects of the rain … I have never been a creature to endure the sound of thunder. It invariably gives rise to… migraine.” She pressed a hand against her temple and swayed slightly. I moved to her at once, and helped her to a chair.
“You should not be out of bed,” I said firmly.
“No — you are too kind — but it is nothing, truly. I shall be vastly better in a moment, I am sure.”
“You were wise to decline the party at Eastwell, for your own sake as well as Fanny's. You could not have sustained the jolting of the carriage, much less the punishment of conversation.”
“Punishment, indeed,” she whispered, and closed her eyes against the thought.
“We none of us slept very well last evening,” I added, with some anxiety for the faintness of her looks. “Our party returned only before midnight, and to news of a dreadful nature. Mr. Collingforth has been found — quite dead. My brothers rode out before dawn to view the body.”
Her breath caught in her throat, and she clutched at my wrist almost painfully.
“Is Mrs. Austen yet emerged from her apartments?”
“I do not believe so. You wished to speak with her?”
“It is nothing — a trifle. Any hour will do. But Mr. Collingforth — it was suicide, I presume? He was driven to take his own life, from the bitter knowledge of his guilt?”
“A man may perhaps slit his own throat,” I replied, “but he is unlikely to then tie a stone to his legs, and trundle himself into a millpond. No, Miss Sharpe, I must believe that poor Collingforth was murdered, like the late Mrs. Grey — tho' for reasons that are as yet obscure to us.”
The governess shuddered visibly. “Good God! That I might be allowed to forget! That dreadful woman—”
“Miss Sharpe—”
“You do not know how her face has haunted me,” she cried, staring up at me blindly. “Like a demon, or a witch, in her bloodred dress.”
I stared at her, aghast. Something more than a dread of violent death was at work in Miss Sharpe — some thing that touched quite nearly on Mrs. Grey herself. I remembered, of a sudden, the little governess's marked reserve at the race-meeting, and her horrified regard for the lady's corpse. Had not her present fever commenced as Mrs. Grey's life ended? — Perhaps they had met before, in Town, when Anne Sharpe was more the lady's social equal, and the girl had despaired at meeting with her again in such reduced circumstances.
“Can not you tell me what this is all about, Miss Sharpe?” I enquired gently.
The governess stiffened, and regained something of her composure. “You are very kind, Miss Austen,” she replied, “but I assure you I merely suffer from the head-ache.”
“Then Dr. Wilmot should examine you.” I turned briskly for the door. “Mrs. Austen wishes to consult him in respect of young Edward, who is not at all improved in his fever; and if the physician is summoned on behalf of one, he might as well have the dosing of us all!”
Miss Sharpe half-rose from her seat and clutched at my arm. “I beg of you, do not disclose my indisposition to Mrs. Austen. That, of all things, I could not bear.”
“But, my dear—”
“Can you not perceive that she already believes me decidedly unsuited to the governance of her children?” Miss Sharpe cried fiercely. “She thinks me a poor, troublesome creature, too delicate for the trials of education. I do not know why she has endured me this long. I shall be turned out without a reference, before a twelvemonth is complete; and how I shall manage then, when all my friends have deserted me—”
“You must calm yourself, Miss Sharpe.” Alarm sharpened my tone, and she winced as tho' a blow had been struck. I sank down by her chair. “Indeed, you distress yourself unduly. I am certain that my sister can find nothing to abhor in your considerable talents; she speaks very highly of your accomplishments, and is full of admiration for your success with Fanny — whom we all know to have arrived at a most trying age. You are to be congratulated, rather than dismissed!”
The governess shook her head, and all but stopped her ears at my words, as tho' I had subjected her to the most thorough abuse; she declared herself unworthy of such kindness, and very nearly intent upon giving notice, so acute was her sense of failure. I attempted to reason with her further; but at length, determined that the wisest course was to put her to bed — and thither she was sent, with orders to take some tea on a tray, and a stern injunction not to set forth until her spirits were entirely recovered.
When I had seen her safely into her bedchamber, I sat a little while in my own; and considered of Miss Sharpe. Broken rest or a case of the migraine could hardly explain so elevated a condition of nerves. She looked quite wild, as tho' all peace was fled from her heart forever. She had certainly been most unwell since the day of the race-meeting. Was that a mere matter of unlucky coincidence — or the working of a deeper evil? She could have had nothing to do with Mrs. Grey's end. The very notion was repugnant — and fantastic in the extreme, for Miss Sharpe had been seated opposite myself for the duration of the heats. Something in the day, however, had destroyed all her complaisance. Only the next morning, she was ardent in her desire to exchange Kent for London. Her disappointment at the failure of the French to overrun the country must be instructive.
Such signs and tokens I revolved for their meaning a while longer — and then quitted the bedchamber in search of my niece Fanny.
I found her in the passage outside the kitchens (the children's favourite haunt), attempting to keep a shuttlecock aloft with the help of young William. A well-feathered shuttlecock shall always have the power to tempt me; I am a proficient of the battledore of old; and so I joined the children straightaway, to their screams of delight. On several occasions we kept it aloft with three strikes of the battledore, and on one memorable instance, for six. And when at last the cock had fallen behind a mountain of bundles left standing in the hall — the work of the invasion packers — and defied retrieval, to William's dismay, we all retired to the kitchen itself, to plead for shortbread and lemon-water.
“Fanny,” I said, after Cook had satisfied our first pangs of thirst, and gone about the business of dressing a guinea hen, “whatever has occurred to unsettle Miss Sharpe?”
She turned upon me a clear green gaze, so much like her mother's. “It must be an affair of the heart, Aunt Jane, I am certain of it.”
“You have read your novels to good effect, Fanny. A romantic young lady will always find trouble to stem from an affair of the heart; but in Miss Sharpe's case, I cannot believe it. She goes nowhere and sees no one — and yet, for much of the past week, she has been decidedly unwell. What can have precipitated her distress?”
“Not me,” William declared stoutly. “I always run when I see her coming.”
“She may go abroad very little,” Fanny said carelessly, “but she has had a letter. I know — I saw it.”
“You saw her correspondence? For shame, Fanny!”
“Not to read,” she protested. “Just to see. Russell brought it to the schoolroom, on a little silver tray, once the post had come.”
“But Miss Sharpe surely has received a letter before. She must have a wide acquaintance — her previous life having been lived in the world of Fashion. There can be nothing extraordinary in this.”
“Oh, Aunt Jane,” Fanny cried irritably, “you are determined to plague and vex me, you troublesome creature! — Do you like that phrase? I learned it by heart, from one of Madame D'Arblay's works.”
“It is admirably put. Madame D'Arblay may always be depended upon for insults in the first style of elegance.”
“But what I would tell you, Aunt, is simply this: Sharpie always receives her letters on Tuesdays. They come from her friends, the Portermans. General Sir Thomas and Lady Porter man are excessively fond of her, you know, and correspond most faithfully. Directly she receives her letters, she sets Eliza and me to learning a piece of verse, and composes an answer while we are bent over our books.”
“I perceive that Miss Sharpe is a creature of method. Perhaps we may hope for the imposition of order upon your sadly muddled life. I fail to see, however, that her method lends itself to your present theory. There is little of the heart written in it.”
“But this letter — the important one — came on Wednesday, Aunt Jane, which you must agree is contrary to all expectation.” Fanny paused to savour her triumph.
“Unless the mails were delayed.”
“But it was not the usual Tuesday letter from the Portermans, because the hand was entirely strange; and I saw that Sharpie caught her breath when she accepted it from Russell.”
“And did she then set you to learning a piece of verse?” I enquired curiously.
“She stuffed the letter hurriedly into her pocket, as tho' she dared not trust herself to peruse its lines,” Fanny confided. “Only consider, Aunt Jane! Sharpie believes her love forever denied — all hope of passion lost — and then, when she had ceased to look for it, the summons comes! He is once more a free man! He longs to press her to his bosom. But she—she cannot determine to go to him. She is tortured with doubt. She reads his letter again and again, rising at midnight to study the words by the light of a flickering taper… tho' they are already written indelibly on her soul…”
“Can not we ask Salkeld to move the boxes?” William broke in plaintively. “I should hate to lose my shuttlecock. Uncle Henry brought it from London, and I am sure that Canterbury has nothing so fine.”
“… and then, at dawn, she burns it in the schoolroom grate!” Fanny declared, with a fine flair for the dramatic.
“She never did!” William cried, “for Daisy never lays a fire in that room in summer.”
“Oh, hush, William.” Fanny dismissed him with a look of scorn; it must be remarkable that she, a girl of twelve, had suffered the proximity of a boy half her age for so long as a morning's exercise. “You have no understanding of narrative structure, you silly boy. The fire at dawn is essential.”
“Yes, dear — but was there a fire?” I could not help asking.
Fanny looked over her shoulder carefully, as tho' to foil an observer. “Miss Sharpe requested Daisy to build one on Thursday morning, altho' the morning was fine. She would insist that the schoolroom was damp, and needed an airing, and that a fire would ward off the danger of a chill. I thought it all nonsense, for you know we did not have any rain until yesterday; but when I returned from my dinner in the nursery, I found her kneeling by the grate, with a bundle of letters in her hands. She was burning them, every one.”
“Wednesday's letter, as well?”
Fanny shrugged eloquently. “I am sure I do not know, Aunt Jane. But it would make a very good story if she had.”
I could not do otherwise than to agree with my niece, and considered of Miss Sharpe's furtive behaviour with a mind grown cold with apprehension. Then I charged Fanny not to plague the governess on the subject of her mysterious correspondence, or to confide the nature of my questions; concern for the young woman's well-being alone had animated my enquiry, and I deemed it best that she be left to nurse her trouble in peace. Fanny and William offered a solemn vow of silence, that I fervently hoped would survive the morning; and so I left them to their shortbread, and the promise of the packing-cases being very soon shifted.
I had burned enough letters myself, to know that they were rarely consumed to satisfaction. Ashes from the schoolroom grate might hold the key to Miss Sharpe's behaviour; and the ashes themselves might yet be located, in some safe corner of the scullery. But could I calmly put in train the ruin of the governess's privacy?
A picture of Anne Sharpe's wretched countenance, as it had appeared this morning in my Yellow Room, decided me in an instant. The governess had said that she was haunted by the murdered Mrs. Grey — and I intended to know the reason why.
“ASHES?” MRS. SALKELD STOOD ARRESTED IN mid-stride, a great ring of keys in one upraised hand. “Whatever should you be wishing for ashes, miss?” Then, recollecting herself, she added swiftly, “—Not that it's the least bit of my business, I'm sure, and you'll forgive the impertinence. You'll be having your reasons, no doubt. I was just that surprised—”
“I'm afraid that in all the bustle of packing, I burned a few papers I should not,” I told her. “I have little hope of any remnant remaining, of course — but while there is the slightest opportunity of retrieval—”
“Ah, you and your little papers, Miss Austen,” the housekeeper returned with a comfortable laugh. “Many's the time I've said to Russell, 'How accomplished all the young ladies are today, to be sure! There's that Miss Jane, always scribbling in her little books, what she sews together herself, and laughing to herself all the while.' There's no end of amusement for the young ladies, nowadays — and in your grandmamma's time, I daresay none of the fine misses even knew their letters!”
I merely inclined my head bashfully at this, and begged silent forgiveness of the dear departed Jane Leigh, late the wife of a Fellow of All Souls, Oxford, who had certainly known her letters — and followed Mrs. Salkeld into the stillroom.[46]
“Here is the ash-tub,” she said with a gesture towards a barrel in the corner. “We always keep a goodly supply, for the soap-making, as you'll see. I'm sure I cannot tell you, miss, where the ashes from the Yellow Room grate might be; and a deal of work you'll find it to sift the lot.”
“Perhaps I might employ a gardener's sieve,” I mused, with an eye to the girth and depth of the barrel.
“Then I shall call for the under-gardener,” Mrs. Salkeld said decisively, “that he might shift the barrel out-of-doors while he's about it, and save us all a good deal of mess. Do you wait a moment, miss, and I'll send Russell in search of the lad.”
I waited a moment — I waited several — and indeed, a quarter-hour had passed, during which the rain failed to dissipate, and the gloom of my task impressed itself forcibly on my mind.
“Are you sure you hadn't better wait for the weather to clear, miss?” Mrs. Salkeld enquired doubtfully, when she had returned from despatching Russell out into the wet.
“You are too good, my dear Mrs. Salkeld — but the anxiety I have caused myself in the destruction of these papers, may only be relieved by immediate activity. I shall take care to don a cloak and bonnet, you may be sure.”
“Lord, miss! You may certainly have the loan of mine, which are hanging right within the door.”
And so, promising to guard Mrs. Salkeld's property from a wanton besmirching, I met the under-gardener on the back terrace, and commenced my unwholesome task.
A QUANTITY OF ASH, AS ANY UPPER HOUSEMAID WILL own, is never a friend to order. Its feather-weight quality will incline it to rapid dispersal in a wind, while its powdery dirt invades every crevice and pore. On a fine day, my task should have been tiresome enough; but that same quantity of ash, turned sodden from the effects of rain, is positively loathsome. Shelter under the eaves of the house as I might, I was as grimy as a chimney sweep's monkey by the time a quarter-hour was out. What my elegant sister Lizzy should say, did she stumble upon me unawares, I shuddered to think; and if Miss Sharpe should venture from her bed—
Mrs. Salkeld had thoughtfully provided a second barrel, for the transference of the stuff, and a large garden trowel in addition to the sieve. My work was fairly rapid, as a result, and I had not progressed beyond a quarter of the barrel's depth when I began to detect a difference in the texture of the ash. Much of it had been of a soft, light-grey powder — the remains of the hickory logs Lizzy burned in her grate while she dressed for dinner, regardless of the season. But now I detected a coarser substance amidst the fine — several large flakes of stiff rag, scorched yellowish-black at their edges.
I dropped the trowel and removed my cotton gloves, already quite spoilt from the effects of the ash — bent down to lift the fragile scraps from their bed of powder— and laid them carefully to rest in the mesh sieve. Delicate work, with all the pressure of time; for Miss Sharpe might determine her migraine to be fled at any moment, and descend to the servants' wing in search of tea. I schooled myself to calm, and fingered my way through the ash for perhaps another quarter-hour, the rain beating soft as a kiss on Mrs. Salkeld's bonnet. Then, perceiving the ash to be once again of the sort that derived from logs alone — more of Lizzy's hickory, no doubt — I declared myself satisfied and carried the precious bits back into the stillroom.
“Mrs. Salkeld,” I called, “I have found success! Russell may retrieve the barrel at his convenience, and convey my thanks to the under-gardener.”
“I'll not be a moment, miss,” Mrs. Salkeld called to me comfortably from the kitchen passage, “once I've just sent this teapot up to poor Miss Sharpe. Rang for Daisy, she did, and another fire; the cold's that penetrating today, what with the rain.”
I left her muttering over the ways of governesses too fine to work for their bread, and smuggled my burden into the library. With the gentlemen gone, it should be quite deserted of life; for Lizzy would spend the better part of the day dressing in her boudoir, in respect of her condolence call at The Larches.
I am sorry to say that Miss Sharpe's letters divulged little to my plundering eyes. However incomplete the attempt at burning had been, the fragments were well-nigh indecipherable. The power of my own sight is indifferent at best, from the adverse effect of writing and sewing in every manner of light; and it was only through the adoption of my brother's quizzing glass — discarded near a pile of tradesmen's bills left lying on his desk— that I could discern anything at all. What emerged under the influence of a stronger lens was a smattering of letters, that trailed off disobligingly: affect? affection? or affable? — mise — chemise? promise? — and then, quite starkly, the entire word death.
I sat back on my heels abruptly at that, and considered. My affection for you, I promise, will endure unto death. That should fit Fanny's reading of the situation. Or perhaps it had said: Such an affable reception, in your white chemise — I am sure you caught your death! Or perhaps the fragments were drawn from separate letters, and together would make no sense whatsoever. In either case, the endeavour was hopeless. I had found just enough to tantalise, and too little to enlighten.
I examined the rest of the fragments in a desultory manner, conscious of an allusion that had escaped me. What was it? Affection? Promise? Nothing to do with those; they were words so debased by the traffic of every day, as to have lost any charge of meaning. Death, then — it must strike any reader dumb with its awful truth. And perhaps the word chemise.
Mrs. Grey, indeed, had found death in her chemise.
I shivered from a cold that owed nothing to the rain, and looked sharply once more at the fragments of paper.
The fractured words, it is true, could tell me little. But I had neglected to consider of the hand.
A firm hand, and yet light in its strokes, like the finest sort of engraving. There was the S, scrawled distinct in the —mise, like a sail unfurled on a t'gallant yard. I had seen this hand before, tho' only briefly. It was the distinctive sloping script of the Gentleman Improver, Julian Sothey.
Jane Walker Leigh (1704-68) was Jane Austen's maternal grandmother. — Editor's note.