Elders and Betters (16 page)

“It is all right, Florence, my dear,” said Jessica, smiling. “We are really fourteen.”

“It is all this wretched uncertainty,” said her son.

“Can't we any of us count?” said Anna.

“I am glad that Aunt Jessica and Aunt Sukey are not both facing death,” said Bernard. “It would be an overwhelming state of affairs in a family.”

“Death has a way of running in families,” said Thomas.

“If we were immortal, we should begin to complain of that,” said Miss Lacy.

“No, I think that is an error, though a usual one,” said Benjamin.

“It is odd that it should be so common,” said Thomas, “when we conceive the highest beings of our imagination, such as gods and angels, as immortal.”

“We say it to comfort ourselves,” said Terence. “We condemn everlasting life, to enable us to face a limited one. We must have something to help us to bear it.”

Jessica rose to end the talk, not so much because it was
uttered too low for her ears, as because when this was so, she mistrusted its nature.

“I must go upstairs and give an eye to the children.”

“I will go too,” said Terence. “I shall be in constant attendance on my mother, in atonement for rating my life above hers.”

“In public too,” said Anna.

“Well, my atonement will also be public. And of course everyone would do it in private. Acts of preferring other people's lives to your own are always done publicly. People don't yield belts and boats to women behind the scenes. Drowned heroes have been seen for the last time in the act of relinquishing them.
Seen
doing it; that is the point. And captains stand in a prominent part of their ships, to go down with them, and sometimes in full uniform. But my public behaviour was on a level with my private, and that is too low a standard. People could only sympathise with it in their hearts, and that means openly condemning it.”

“What is that noise?” said Jessica, as they approached the schoolroom.

“The sound of family strife,” said Terence.

His mother hastily opened the door.

“You are not fighting, are you?” she said, with a hopefulness in the face of circumstances, that was hardly characteristic.

The combatants fell apart, startled by discovery, but mastered by their passions. Their eyes, uncertain on their mother and smouldering on each other, ranged to and fro.

“What is it all about?” said Jessica.

Her children appeared to be at a loss, a truer impression of their state of mind than she knew.

“We pulled the wish-bone,” said Dora.

“We feel we know the whole,” said Terence.

“And did you both want the winning side?” said Jessica. “You must have known that only one could have it. That is the point of pulling it.”

Julius and Dora exchanged a glance, this time of the fellow-feeling of the misunderstood.

“Julius, you should never fight with a girl, and one younger than yourself. And, Dora, a little sister should set her brother an example. You both understand me, don't you?”

“Yes,” said the children, discerning no injustice in the differentiation, and therefore untroubled by it.

“And here is Father, come to see that you have been quarrelling,” said Jessica, as if this aggravated the position, as the culprits felt it did.

“Well, what have you to say for yourselves?” said Thomas, in a grave tone.

The children met each other's eyes in sympathy. Julius had unfairly twisted the bone, but confession would have startled and embarrassed his sister, and added to their list of unmentionable memories.

“Well, I am sure you are both sorry now,” said Jessica, wiser for occasions when she had tried to exact this statement. So we won't talk any more about it. Indeed, I think the less said about it, the better.”

Julius and Dora wondered, not for the first time, what had led to this fortunate method of winding up a painful situation, and also wondered if circumstances ever arose that were entirely unmentionable.

“And why have you not eaten your pudding?” said their mother, believing herself to be broaching a different subject.

“Because the matter no longer under discussion supervened,” said Terence.

“Well, you had better have it for tea,” said Jessica. “It is as good cold as hot. And just now it would remind you too much of what is better forgotten.”

“Mother and the pudding seem to have something in common,” said Thomas, causing some mirth.

“And perhaps you will think, when you eat it, of the reason for your having it at such a different time.”

“Between the pair of them, there is no escape,” said Terence.

“And now you had better run out into the air,” said Jessica, putting a hint of reproach into her recommendation of a wholesome atmosphere. “And I hope that cobwebs of all kinds will be blown away.”

The children joined hands and ran out of the room, Jessica smiling after them. They walked to the rock with the even steps natural to an errand that went without saying, swinging each other's hands in unspoken amity. It did not occur to them to discuss the ethics of the situation. The guilt was of a kind that might have belonged to either; neither would have felt any shame in incurring it; they had no condemnation of it and little interest in it.

“O great and good and powerful god, Chung,” prayed Dora, “we beseech thee to pardon the evil passions that assailed us and overcame our strength.”

“Me twisting the bone,” said Julius, with a nudge of reminder.

“And to pardon this thy servant, in that he perverted justice and yielded to the lust of desire,” continued Dora, in quité unretributive tones, “and to guide us both into the way of righteousness and peace. For Sung Li's sake, amen.”

“For Sung Li's sake, amen. We ought to do something for Chung now, so as not to be always asking things and doing nothing,” said Julius, looking about him, and suddenly standing transfixed as though by an incredible sight. “There is Reuben watching us! As if he had a part in our mysteries! Our service in our temple is no longer private to ourselves.”

Reuben was standing with his eyes upon them, and a face expressive of wonder, interest, and the feelings called for by an occasion of worship.

“What are you doing, intruding upon the hidden and sacred orgies?” said Julius, striking ah attitude and employing tones of rhetoric, while Dora accepted the occasion
for masculine initiative. “Who are you, that you should break in upon things alien to your common clay? Away, you of the peering eyes and the straying mind. Seek fitter objects for your prying.”

“I am not prying. I only came the same way as you did. Aunt Jessica told me to follow you. How could I know there was anything secret going on by this rock?”

“The great voice broods over it, and the mighty whispers surround it,” said Dora, in stern rejoinder.

“Are you about to withdraw your steps, or are we to seek strength from the god to assail you?” said Julius, maintaining his threatening posture. “Strength will descend on us in the needed measure.”

“I can go, if you want me to; but couldn't I be a humbler kind of worshipper? There are different grades of service.”

Julius looked at his sister at this evidence of humility and understanding.

“Only the two chosen of the god minister in the temple of the most high,” he said in a wavering tone.

“But couldn't I be a sort of servitor?”

Dora and Julius met each other's eyes, and both fell on their knees.

“Will the god receive the lame and halt attendance of this stray suppliant?” said Dora.

“If so, let him gird his loins and attend humbly in the seat of the lowly,” said Julius, turning his head and makng a sign of injunction.

Reuben drew nearer and knelt behind the pair, and the three, as if at a signal, bowed their heads and moved their hands in unison.

“O great and good and powerful god, Chung, graciously accept this our lowly kinsman as a servitor in thy temple. For great is his need of thy guidance and the teaching of thy word. Lighten his affliction, and grant him the heart of the believer. For Sung Li's sake, amen.”

“And if you want to make a private intercession, you may
continue on your knees for one swift moment,” said Julius, rising and casting a look in his cousin. “But take heed that your words be brief, and that you do not importune the god, or admit any thought or word of the scorner.”

“O great and good and powerful god, Chung,” muttered Reuben, “grant that I may grow up into an absolutely normal man. And grant me the favour and the friendship of thy servant, Terence. For Sung Li's sake, amen.”

He rose and followed his cousins, with the feeling that he had after stirring a wish into the Christmas pudding, that if there were anything in these problematic forces, they could now only operate in his favour.

“WELL, YOU LOOK rather under the weight of things,” said Anna, encountering Terence in his hall, on her way to her aunt. “Has anything come upon you?”

“Only the displeasure of Aunt Sukey.”

“And is not that enough?”

“Well, it does not seem to count much any longer.”

“What is the reason of it?”

“We do not sufficiently attend upon her, or expend enough feeling upon her approaching end.”

“Well, I must say I don't think she does get much sympathy on that score. And it does constitute a real claim. It is a lonely business, waiting to be translated to another sphere.”

“It is a very long one,” said Terence.

“And does that make it better for her?”

“Well, she seems to like her life to be prolonged.”

“I don't think I should in her place.”

“It shows how much more grasp I have of her mind. Experience has done something for us. But it has destroyed our natural feeling, and now we have to fabricate it, and she is a judge of the real thing.”

“Yes, I should say her tastes are for the genuine. And I think she must often wish the end would come. This waiting on the brink of the abyss can't have much to recommend it.”

“Well, it is so very like ordinary life,” said Terence.

“Oh, make no mistake, it bears very little resemblance to it. How would you like to get up in the morning, without knowing whether you were to go to bed at night? It is a situation that must soon pall.”

“It seems to keep its vitality.”

“It may be a joke to you. It is not to her.”

“It was so little of one to me, that it deadened my sensibilities. I have become a different man.”

“It can hardly work in that way with her. She must remain alive to the dangers of her place.”

“It is no good to try to work on my feelings. I told you they were dead.”

“I am glad I have not become entirely insensitive.”

“You have not had time. There would be no excuse for it. I should be very much shocked if it happened so soon.”

“Well, you shock me a thought on your own account now and again.”

Anna knew no other method of approach, and gave her cousin no idea that she was putting forth her appeal. She thought that holding her own exalted her, and had no suspicion that people might tire of disagreement.

“It is not kind to say such things, when I live in a shadowed home,” said Terence.

“That hardly matters, if the shadow has ceased to make an impression.”

“But that is a sad thing to happen to a highly evolved creature.”

“I am content with my lower state, if it allows of my being of some use to someone in need.”

“I should not have thought you were a noble character,” said Terence, looking into Anna's face.

“Neither should I; I mean, I do think that being with Aunt Sukey has brought out something in me that I did not know was there. Brought it to the surface, I suppose. Not that you need to be so exalted, to have a little ordinary compassion.”

“Mine was not ordinary when I was able to give it.”

“And I daresay mine is,” said Anna, in resigned acceptance. “But that will not matter, if it can hold to life. Workaday qualities may be the best in the end. Things can be too ethereal to last.”

“But it is nice to think that my qualities were of that kind. I should dislike to be a person who would wear well.”

“That happens to be my precise ambition,” said Anna.

Sukey came slowly across the hall, stooping more than usual over her stick, her face at once flushed and drawn, and her eyes, bent on the floor, very bright.

“Anna, my dear, have you come to be with your cousins, or to spend an hour with me? I don't know which was in your mind, but if it was the latter, you must come to me at once, or my need of you will be past. I have had some work to do this morning; and that is no longer the right thing for me, and my energy is nearly spent.”

“I have come to be with you,” said Anna, turning and making a scrambling way through the hall. “I was detained by a young man who seems to lie in wait for the unwary, and was involved in an argument before I knew where I was.”

“I have never known a boy with so much spare time,” said Sukey, as they went upstairs.

“His mornings are supposed to be bestowed on Reuben. I don't pretend to know what his method is. Reuben has lost his heart to him; that is clear, though of course he thinks it is not.”

Anna was more fortunate than her brother in that no one suspected her similar case. She had less difficulty in disguising her feelings than revealing them, and her secrets were her own.

“Well, I have had a duty to do to-day,” said Sukey, as she came to her chair. “It seems strange that I should be giving my mind to this world's goods, when I shall so soon be unconscious of them. But it seems they are still mine, for me to say how they are to go when I am gone. I still have that little power, and have no choice but to use it. So every stage of life brings its own duties, even the last.”