Elders and Betters (27 page)

“It may well be that in this case,” said his sister, grimly.

“Why must you give the account?” said Tullia. “I hope I may be spared it.”

“I cannot think you are sincere,” said Bernard.

“I don't know,” said Anna, in a tone of some sympathy, resting her eyes on Tullia. “I do not see why Aunt Jessica's children should be troubled by the matter.”

“A conclusion that you come to rather late,” said Esmond.

“Now that we have heard so much, we will hear it from my mother's own lips,” said Terence.

“Well, no doubt you will do that,” said Anna, in a mild tone.

“I suggest that you leave the matter, my daughter,” said Benjamin. “Indeed I direct you to do so.”

“I am more than willing, if I am allowed to, Father. I keep on being dragged back to it. I should be glad enough of release.”

“You may consider yourself free,” said Esmond.

“Then pray let us talk about the weather.”

“It is worthy of comment,” said Benjamin, looking at the window. “Indeed we are bound by it for the time.”

“Oh, don't say that,” said his daughter, sitting up with an expression of consternation. “And Aunt Jessica may return at any moment. My escape was becoming the first object in my mind.”

“You can achieve it by walking through the rain,” said Esmond.

His sister seemed to give the matter her thought.

“That would attract too much notice. I think I must grin and bear the position. Aunt Jessica will be better able to pass me over, than if I made myself conspicuous by my absence.”

“You seem to have an instinct of protection towards my mother,” said Terence.

“I believe I did have it for a moment,” said Anna, with an air of being half-startled by herself. “It was an instinct or
an impulse or something; there was nothing quixotic about it. I was taken by it unawares.”

“I will take you home, if you want to go.”

“Will you?” said Anna, starting to her feet. “Then let us set off before either of your parents appears. You set an example to my unchivalrous brothers.”

“Why is your departure less conspicuous for involving that of Terence?” said Esmond.

“The absence of two makes a smaller party. That of one could yawn as an abyss,” said his sister, edging through the door, as if it were a case for furtiveness.

“Did my mother seem very unlike herself?” said Terence, as they went into the rain.

“Yes and no,” said Anna, almost pausing for consideration, in the face of the weather. “Not so unlike herself, as I know her. Very unlike, as you do, I should say.”

“Why should there be that difference? You have hardly seen her alone.”

“That was true until to-day. It is not true now. I saw her alone with a vengeance, and I somehow got the impression that she was acting according to herself.”

“You cannot mean that you know her better than I do.”

“No, I don't suppose I mean that,” said Anna, in a manner of uncertainty. “But I rather think I do, odd thing though it seems to say.”

“You must have had a strange discourse,” said Terence.

“I am not going to give you a summary of it,” said Anna, hastening along with a spring in her step, that came from a sense of his proximity.

“Do you mind if she repeats it?”

“Of course not. Why should I?” said Anna, turning to look at him in some surprise.

“Then I am free to ask her any question?”

“I suppose so. What have I to do with it? I would hardly recommend your probing into the matter, but it is not my affair.”

“Do I run the risk of any startling revelation?”

“No, I don't think so,” said Anna, slowly; “I can only suppose not.”

“Do you mean that my mother might not give me a true account?”

“Well, I would not in her place,” said Anna, “Not using the words, ‘in her place,' in a full sense.”

“I have never known her say an untrue word.”

“No,” said Anna, in a still slower tone. ‘But it is easy to leave words unsaid. That would not give her the feeling of using deceit.”

“Indeed it would, if it gave a wrong impression. She would not be bound by the letter. She is not a simple person.”

“No, no, she is not,” said Anna.

“Do you mean that she might play a double part?”

“She might do anything, according to my conception of her,” said Anna, in a tone so quick and light that it almost seemed meant to elude his ears.

“My mother cannot stand scenes and arguments,” said Terence, in a sharper tone. “She is not fit for them.”

“I can hardly see her except as rather well endowed for the purpose.”

“You know she is almost a nervous invalid?”

“No, no, that is not so,” said Anna, shaking her head. “She is a person of considerable nervous reserve and power.”

“It must seem to me that I know her better than you do.”

“Yes,” said Anna, slackening her pace and looking into his face; “I suppose it must.”

“You mean that I am mistaken?”

“Well, I feel that no one can know her but me, that she has not given anyone else the opportunity.”

“She cannot have sides that she has hidden from me all my life.”

“Does not that sort of thing always happen in families?”

“At what a rate you travel!” said Terence, catching her up. “The rain is much less. Why do you use such a pace?”

“I have received a goad, and I suppose still feel its impetus.”

“You talk unlike yourself. I thought you were a person who said what came into her mind.”

“I am not the woman I was yesterday,” said Anna, between jest and earnest. “I feel like the people in history, who never smiled again.”

“So I am to regard you as a stranger?”

“Well, you had not so much of an opinion of me, had you? I suppose you liked me as your blunt, straightforward cousin.”

“I wish I could continue to like you as that.”

“No,” said Anna, shaking her head, “I am not going to be drawn. I hold to my resolve. I will not be led into disclosures.”

“My mother would not mind your saying anything that was true.”

Anna looked at her cousin with an equivocal expression.

“Well, I should not say anything that wasn't. But I have not her sanction to reveal anything at all.”

“So she was in a position to impose conditions. That throws another light on the matter.”

“She does seem to have indicated the course to be pursued,” said Anna, as if slowly coming to this realisation. “I suppose I let her do so. She must appeal to some sort of chivalrous instinct. I believe I felt that she must be saved from herself.”

“I wish that could be done for her indeed.”

“Most of us are our own worst enemies, I suppose.”

“No, we are our own best friends. Even our criticism of ourselves is confined to the night. And fancy criticism not being more public than that! There is no reason to save people from themselves, only from other people. My mother is an exception.”

“I don't think I have these remorseful night-time moments. And any daylight soul-searching does not show me so much to be ashamed of. Not much to be proud of either;
merely a plain, cleanish, dull sheet. I don't mean that I do not welcome any good that comes my way.”

“That shows what a friend you are to yourself. Other people hardly do that for us.”

“No, they want it all for themselves,” said Anna, in a resigned tone.

“You mean that my mother feels that she should inherit her sister's money. But as it is her real opinion, it throws no light on her.”

“It is the opinion that throws the light, I suppose,” said Anna, seeming not to give much attention to her words.

“She is not so much concerned with the money, as with Aunt Sukey's state of mind.”

“Yes, that must be a weight on her,” said Anna, in the same manner.

“Was Aunt Sukey in such a depressed mood?”

“Well, not so much depressed, as angry and hard and bitter. She seemed in a state of final disillusionment somehow. And that is sad in the last hours of a person's life. It struck me as sad, though I did not suspect that the end was so near.”

“Well, if it was a final condition, any extra time could not have remedied it.”

“Not in any way that would have resulted in benefit to your family.”

“You know I did not mean that.”

“Then what did you mean?” said Anna, in a downright tone. “You were thinking of the will, as you know. Well, your mother claims the money, because Aunt Sukey might have left it to her; and I claim it because she did leave it to me. There is not a hair's breadth between us, or we will say there is not, though some people would not agree. I should not have thought of the money, if it had not fallen to me. Indeed I did not think of it.”

“You hardly had any reason.”

“People find reasons, if their minds have that particular trend.”

“You cannot say that my mother's has it.”

“Well, I don't see how I am to say anything else, after my particular experience. But let us say that I know nothing about your mother. That is the best way to leave it. Now with Aunt Sukey, miles though she was above me in looks and manners and mind, I had that sense of affinity, that makes us at our best with our flesh and blood. It is a satisfying feeling; I don't know how I shall get on without it.”

“You have plenty of people related to you. But they are not supposed to render us that kind of service.”

“Well, I am not much of a one for outsiders. I am happy enough with my outspoken, unadmiring family. If I do not appear to advantage amongst them—and I daresay I don't; indeed I don't think I do—I don't break my heart over it. Father and I are good enough friends, and it was satisfying to meet his sister, and find the same sort of bond. It was a great addition to my lot. It is difficult to give it up, just as I had come to depend on it.”

Anna controlled her words and her tone, but once again quickened her pace.

“You do not feel the same with my mother?”

“I feel what she has made me feel. I am not going to expand on it. You will hear her side of the matter, and it is the one you had better hear. There could never be a stronger case of the difference between two points of view. And you must choose one and abide by it. That is what people do.”

“But I am not the same as other people. It is absurd to have to tell you quite so often.”

Anna gave a laugh as she reached her door.

“Well, thank you for coming home with me. I have no doubt that it went against the grain. It could hardly do otherwise, when I was escaping from your family. So I will not make you the poor return of asking you in.”

“It was clearly my business to give you any help I could,” said Terence.

As Anna watched him go down the drive, her eyes lighted and deepened her face, so that it almost bore a look of Jessica. Her resolve to hold to her money had its root, had her cousin known it, in her feeling to himself. The woman who relinquished it, would be less acceptable in the end than the woman who held it. Anna could look beyond the hour; no credit or success of the moment weighed with her; a sacrifice easy to accept was easy to forget, and she would have been readier to make it, if it had had less reason.

Her father and brothers returned from the Calderons' house. They could hardly sympathise both with Anna and their aunt, and hesitated to remain under the latter's roof. Anna looked up and spoke in an ironic manner.

“Well, did you bring me any messages from my relatives?”

“One from your aunt,” said her father. “She hopes you will go to see them as usual, and they will like to come here.”

“Well, that is heaping coals of fire upon my head! But it is a course in which I never place much faith. It either means that people feel they owe it, or that they want to put the other person into their debt. I can always dispense with an obvious rendering of good for evil.”

“I think it sits rather naturally on Aunt Jessica,” said Bernard.

“I object to afterthoughts,” said his sister. “It is the feeling of the moment that counts. We can all do pretty well with enough reflection. Second thoughts are only best in that sense. Did you meet Terence on your way?”

“He came to his gates, as we went out of them,” said Benjamin.

“Well, let us forget the other family, Father. The mere fact of being under their roof is too much.”

“Your experience went beyond that,” said Esmond. “Now we can hear your account of what took place.”

“Oh, it was only words, words, words, if you mean what passed between Aunt Jessica and me. There was her opinion
that Aunt Sukey's will should be ignored, and another imagined, against mine that it should be accepted as it was made,” said Anna, in a swift, almost careless tone, that seemed to put the matter quickly behind. “This creating of wills to meet a situation does not hold water. I could not support it. It had to end in nothing.”

“As it had done before,” said Esmond.

“The matter should have been allowed to rest,” said Benjamin. “I do not say a word about your aunt; she is not to be judged as other people. But your uncle should have ensured it.”

“Oh, I agree with you, Father. I had the most terrible hour. It was not a fair way to treat a person under their roof. And to choose Aunt Sukey's room, by way of refining the torment! But it roused the devil within me, and defeated its purpose. I became as different a person as Aunt Jessica. I do not blame her, and did not at the moment. I even felt inclined to yield to her in a sense. But I did not submit to the method she chose. That was not the way to my compassion.”

“It was fortunate for you that she chose it,” said Esmond.

“Your words have ceased to have any meaning,” said Benjamin to his son. “You would do as well not to waste them.”