Moments later, they began the first shift to nurse her. Gwyneth went first, and her mother got steadily worse through the night. She stayed with her until noon, and then left her in Bettina’s care. There was no change when Sybil took over at midnight. She stayed on duty until the next day. The doctor came and went and brought a nurse with him, but there was nothing they could do. They just had to wait it out, as the flu tore through Augusta like a tidal wave, weakening her as the fever raged, and she began to cough blood.
Augusta was barely conscious on the third day when Gwyneth came to nurse her again and relieved Sybil. Bert came to check on them, and Gwyneth sent him away. She didn’t want him to get sick too. Bettina kept her mother company that afternoon, before she relieved her, but Gwyneth didn’t want to leave her mother’s side. They were each sitting on one side of her, when Augusta sighed deeply, looked from one to the other and smiled, thanked them for nursing her, and then closed her eyes and exhaled her last breath. It was quiet and peaceful. She didn’t struggle, but it was all over. Her body had succumbed to the dreaded Spanish flu. Gwyneth and Bettina sat looking at her in shock, with tears rolling down their cheeks, as Augusta lay on the bed, an empty shell with a spirit that had flown.
Sybil and Blake were deeply saddened when Bert told them and their children. The entire house went into mourning, and Phillips put a black wreath on the door. They had had too many of them in recent years, and Alicia saw it when she came to work the next day and wondered what it was for. She’d seen them there before, and they always looked creepy to her. She wondered at times if the Gregorys were into witchcraft. But at least none of them were talking to themselves that day, as she perceived it. The Butterfields were in seclusion. Gwyneth was organizing her mother’s funeral, and Bettina was helping with the details.
Bert told Angus the day after it happened, as gently as he could, but he didn’t seem to understand what Bert told him, and rambled for a long time about people Bert didn’t know. He didn’t appear to comprehend that his younger sister had died, or what Bert had said. He took to his bed that afternoon, and refused to get up the next day. He said he was tired, but his mind was clearly rejecting the information he’d been given. It was too much for him to bear. He played his bagpipes in the middle of the night, and Bert had to ask him to stop.
He wouldn’t get up to dress the day of the funeral, and after discussing it, Gwyneth and Bert agreed to let him stay home. His consciousness was refusing what had happened. He didn’t have the Spanish flu, but he was clearly not well himself, in body or mind. It was as though someone had pulled the plug, and he was simply fading away on his own.
The funeral Gwyneth organized was solemn and beautiful and respectful, but the Gregorys couldn’t go with them. They couldn’t travel back in time to events outside the house, so they waited quietly for them at home. Quinne said she was happy to have met her, even for a brief time. They all sat in the drawing room afterward, had a light dinner together, and went to bed. And in the morning, Angus had died in his sleep, and joined his sister. Sybil wondered how long it would take them to return, since she knew they would, and that Augusta’s spirit was strong. But no one could say, and Sybil didn’t want to ask.
Andy and Quinne left for Edinburgh the next day, to go back to school, and Caroline flew to Los Angeles that night. Max had gone back just before Augusta got sick. It was a sad time for all of them, but they knew she had led a good life. Sybil went through the box of photographs the bank had given her. She found pictures of Lili as a little girl in France, and Bettina with her, and a man Sybil didn’t recognize. They were all there with dates on the back, and there was a beautiful one of Augusta in her youth, which she set aside to frame and put on her desk. When Gwyneth saw it there a few days later, she asked how Sybil had gotten it, and she said she’d found it in a drawer, not wanting to tell her about the box of photos from the bank, or Bettina’s book. Gwyneth nodded. It was how her mother had looked when Gwyneth was a young girl.
The house was in deep mourning for several weeks, and Bettina thought about postponing her trip to Paris, but Gwyneth told her she should go. There was nothing more she could do at home. Only time would gentle the loss, but the house was too quiet without the indomitable matriarch who had terrorized them all.
Bettina went back to her packing, and Sybil and Gwyneth both knew how lonely it would be when Bettina and Lili left. The only young people in the house would be Lucy, who rarely emerged from her room except on particularly good days, and Magnus and Charlie. The others had all flown the nest or would soon. Gwyneth dreaded that moment, and so did Sybil for her.
Chapter 13
On the tenth of February, Gwyneth and Bert took Bettina, Lili, and the nurse to the train station, and watched the steamer trunks loaded into the first-class freight car, and helped her settle into the two first-class compartments they would occupy on the trip to New York. Bettina had their passports, their tickets, a letter of credit for a bank in Paris that her father had given her, foreign currency, and more than she needed in U.S. cash. She had enough clothes with her to stay away for ten years, and she was wearing an elegant midnight blue wool traveling suit with a mink coat over it, from her mother, and a very elegant black hat and long black gloves. She looked like a stylish young matron leaving on a trip, and she would board the RMS Baltic in New York for the trip to Liverpool, then Cherbourg, and from there by train to Paris, to stay with her parents’ friends the Margaux. Gwyneth couldn’t hold back the tears when she said goodbye to her daughter.
“Come back soon,” she managed to choke out. Bert kept an arm around Gwyneth’s shoulders as they watched the train pull out of the station. Bettina waved from the window in her compartment until she could no longer see them. She felt guilty for leaving, but like a bird that had been set free. It was exciting to be traveling across the country and stopping in cities along the way. She couldn’t wait to get to New York and stay at a hotel for a night and then board the ship for the transatlantic crossing. It was the most thrilling thing that had ever happened to her. She felt very grown up, as she settled down on the train with a book, while the nurse took Lili to their own compartment for a nap.