Elders and Betters (38 page)

“We don't want to marry each other,” she said, in her low, even tones, as he met her eyes.

“Don't we, my dear?” he said, his eyes looking as if he were living in another scene, and his voice sounding of it.

“You are too old for me. You have had too many people in your life. You have gone too far in it, to turn back again with me. And I do not want to give so much more than I am given. I am not a self-sacrificing person, and I should not like to be. I would rather have what is natural for my youth.”

“You are not jealous of the dead?” said Thomas.

“No,” said Florence, in a slow tone, that told him openly that her jealousy would not lie here.

She took his ring off her hand and put it into his, keeping her eyes on it, in order not to lift them to his face. He watched her as she did it, and then rose and took her hand, and putting the ring on another finger, seemed to hold the hand for all to see.

“Wear it in memory of me,” he said; “and as the memory dies, it will become your own.”

“Give it to Tullia,” said Florence, still looking at the ring. “It is more in her taste than mine. I believe you thought of her, when you were choosing it.”

“I should always think of Tullia,” said Thomas, turning the ring in his hand and saying no more.

“Give it to her as a wedding present,” said Florence,
looking up at last and smiling from father to daughter.

“Well, if he thought of me when he was choosing it, it is fair that it should find its proper home,” said Tullia. “It will make a companion for Bernard's, which does look rather lonely by itself.”

“There are your mother's rings,” said Thomas. “I must give you those. She did not wear them often, but she wore nothing else. Some we will put aside for Dora, and the rest are yours.” He spoke as if the other matter had left his mind.

“It never rains but it pours,” said Tullia. “But Mother would like Terence to choose one for his wife.”

“Oh, I should like that,” said Anna. “One good ring would be just to my mind. I don't care for a lot of nondescript things, but a single good one that is known as one's own, is a different thing. I think everyone can do with it.”

“Would Florence have had the rings, if this marriage had come about?” said Terence to Bernard. “Now somehow I want to know that more than anything in the world, and my curiosity may never be satisfied.”

“It would not, if I were in Uncle Thomas's place,” said Anna.

“I suppose only Father will ever know, and I believe I shall never forget it.”

Terence forgot it, but only Thomas ever knew.

“Mother thought I was too young for rings,” said Tullia, lifting her hand to the light. “And perhaps they do give a suggestion of staidness and maturity.”

“Well, that comes anyhow,” said Anna. “I don't think that rings have much to do with it.”

Thomas looked at the last ring he had chosen, on the only living hand that he knew, and hid his pleasure at seeing it there, and his pain that it was not alone.

“And one day, when you give me a wedding present, give me something that you chose without thinking of anyone else,” said Florence, speaking with an ease that told of the end of the tale for herself, and in bringing no change to Thomas's face, told also of its end for him.

“You must be relieved.” said Esmond, in a quiet tone to Miss Lacy.

“No, I do not think that is my feeling. I watched what happened, as a person apart. As a person apart, I saw it fade away. I had no other connection with it,”

“You must have wished that you could prevent the whole thing.”

“No, I do not choose to play such a part in people's lives. I do not interfere with their course. I do not feel able for that,” said Miss Lacy, with a slight stress on the last word, as if her inability did not extend beyond a point.

“I suppose I have your permission to step into my uncle's shoes?”

Miss Lacy looked into Esmond's face.

“I do not give my permission. I do not refuse it,” she said, moving her lips very definitely. “I do not say anything. I have nothing to say. I feel I know nothing. Mine is not that particular knowledge.”

“But you will help me, if you can?”

“I would refuse my help to no one who needed it. I hope I have never done that.”

“Then ask Florence to come here,” said Esmond, in a driven tone. “I can't wait for things to come about in their own way. There would never come an end.”

Miss Lacy simply signed to her niece.

“I have been asked to summon you. And I have done as I was asked. There seemed no reason to refuse. And I refuse no request without reason. But I am qualified to do no more.”

“I will do the rest,” said Esmond, his tone betraying that he was forcing himself to a point all but impossible. “I want to take my uncle's place, and to say that I have always wanted it. He took it before I saw a chance for myself. It seems there must be some hope for me, if there was for him.”

Miss Lacy laughed, and continued the laughter to herself as if she could not help it, and Florence also gave a little sound of mirth.

“It is the fashion to make and break engagements in public here,” said Esmond.

“And you must be in the fashion,” said Miss Lacy, again moving her lips more than usual. “Yes, you must be that. What is the good of belonging to your generation, if your place is not in the van?”

“Shall I follow it to the end, and offer the whole thing to the general ear?”

“Well, fashion does not admit half-and-half dealings,” said Miss Lacy, whose powers of assistance in these matters went further than she had claimed.

“I must not be asked to do or say anything,” said Florence. “I have said and done enough.”

“Fashion does not require it of you,” said her aunt. “She makes her demand of the male. She is one of those rare females who consider their own sex. If that be rare; I have not found it so.”

Esmond put his arm about Florence and turned to face the room.

“One announcement more or less cannot make much difference,” he said, in an almost cold tone. “You must be too used to them, to think much of another. So we will make it and do no more.” He hurried his words and turned to a seat, and drew Florence down by his side.

There was the natural pause.

“Another engagement!” said Claribel. “I don't feel that I can keep count of them. I shall soon have married three of my flock. I think I manage most successfully.”

“We have so many, that the same people have to be used over again,” said Tullia. “I have played a poor part, in that I have been only once at disposal. But I am glad to have come in at all.”

“Yes, you and I accept the one man and are done with it,” said Anna. “We do not pretend to be involved in a wider choice. But we shall flood the neighbourhood with our intermarryings. It does not seem that it could have been a
very full one, as the engagements are between two households, and related ones into the bargain.”

“Three households,” said Esmond's voice, “and one of them not related.”

“Yes, you are in a proud position. You have not had to fall back upon a cousin. But Miss Lacy had a sort of connection with the house. It comes to much the same thing.”

“No, I do not agree there,” said Miss Lacy, shaking her head. “I admit Esmond's distinction.”

“So this household will consist solely of Thomas and the two children,” said Claribel.

“Yes, that will be my family,” said Thomas, “and I hope I shall be able to do well by it. The motherless children must not also be without a father. I hope there would have been no danger of it.”

There was no danger now.

Thomas rose and beckoned to the children, as they ran past the window, and going into the hall, waited for their approach.

“My little ones!” he said, sitting down and drawing them to his sides, in the assumption that his rush of feeling had its counterpart in them. “My little son and daughter! We shall be so much to each other, we three. We have no one else.”

The children were silent over this assurance of affection and the ground for it.

“Haven't you got Florence?” said Dora, drawing herself away to look into his face.

“I have given Florence to Esmond,” said Thomas, with no thought that he was not speaking the truth. “She is young, and he is young, and they will be better for each other.”

There was a pause.

“There is even more difference between you and us,” said Julius.

“I am your father, my little son.”

“Does having no one else make people fonder of those who are left?” said Dora.

“Well, it concentrates their feeling on them,” said Thomas. “It means there is no one to share it.”

“But it isn't like the real feeling of choosing someone?”

“There are deeper things than choice, my little girl,” said Thomas, forgetting that he had not given his preference to these.

“I don't think Dora and I have ever had much besides ourselves,” said Julius. “Not as our chief thing.”

“You shall have it now,” said Thomas, his tone solemn under the stress of giving what was now at his disposal. “My poor little boy and girl, I shall have to be father and mother to you. I see that is to be my part.”

“You didn't really want it, did you?” said Dora, with a certain sympathy in her tone.

“If he is a father, it will be enough,” said Terence to Bernard at the fireside. “Do people think that no one can be a loss, as long as they are alive? Why does he not say that he will be brother and sister to them?”

“You must look on me as your elder brother,” continued Thomas.

“Oh, he is saying it,” said Terence.

“He can be a cousin to them too,” said Bernard. “I am going to be sunk in my own life.”

“You must look upon me as father and mother, brother and sister and friend,” said Thomas, feeling a warmth of giving proportionate to what he offered. “We will remember Mother together. We will go hand-in-hand along the paths of life.”

“Of course, we are really used to going alone,” said Julius.

“You will soon forget those days,” said Thomas, feeling it would be well simply to obliterate what was to be regretted.

“We are not young enough for that,” said his son.

“If you had married Florence, would you have forgotten the days with Mother?” said Dora, in some trouble over the workings of the human mind.

“I suppose you would have had to forget them, before you did it,” said Julius.

“Mother would have understood,” said Thomas, with the common assumption that understanding in the dead would involve sympathy and approval. “But that is over and can be forgotten.”

“I don't think people forget so many things,” said Julius. “I don't see how they can.”

“It was a mistake, and mistakes have no meaning,” said his father. “That is all we need say about it.”

“The less said about it, the better,” said Dora.

Thomas looked at her and put back her hair from her face.

“We must bring your childhood back, my little one.”

“She has never lost her childhood,” said Julius. “She couldn't if she wanted to. People can't do these things.”

“And it wouldn't be such a very good thing to bring back, if I had lost it,” said Dora.

“The outward signs of it are good to other people,” said Thomas. “We must remember that. But I am sure the real thing is underneath.”

“Yes, people do like it,” said Julius. “I daresay it makes things easier for them.”

“I must put some joy and sunshine into these early days,' said Thomas, still seeking to amend the conditions that now had his attention. “You must have some such things to remember.”

“We have chiefly had experience of the seamy side of life, haven't we?” said Dora.

“Well, you have had the one great sorrow,” said Thomas, seeming to prefer this account of things. “I could not save you that. But we will face it together, and it will draw us closer. It will bind you to your father.”

“But it isn't a good thing it has happened, is it?” said Julius.

“And freedom to walk alone is one of the best things in life,” said Dora.

Thomas again pushed back her hair, as if her felt that it threw some cloud over her mind.

“Suppose we stop quoting other people, and say the things that come into our own little head.”

“Quoting is saying things from books in the same words,” said Julius. “She wasn't doing that.”

“I mean that my little girl's own little thoughts are what I like to hear. I have plenty of those from books and other people.”

There was a silence, while Julius and Dora exchanged a glance, and with it a resolution to submit to fate.

“I suppose that losing the same person, and having to live without her, does make people feel like each other,” said Dora, leaning against her father. “It would, if you think. Because they would so often have the same thoughts.”

Thomas stroked her hair with a surer touch, conveying his appreciation of these natural and childlike words.

“They would, my little one. They do indeed. You and Julius and I will find it so. You shall indeed find it.”

“And I suppose they would get to feel more and more the same?” said Dora, with wider eyes.

“You shall find that too,” said her father.

“And I don't suppose that even a lot of time going by would make any difference?” said Julius.

“No, my little son, it shall not make any. I give you my word. I can take that weight off your minds,” said Thomas, in gladness that his children should have been burdened in this way.

“So everything is planned, and we can settle down in peace and safety,” said Dora in a comfortable tone, establishing herself between her father's knees.

“Quaint, little maiden!” said Thomas, now able to stroke her hair in simple tenderness.