Elders and Betters (6 page)

“Such family devotion as yours is very unusual, Father.”

“The relation of brother and sister goes back to the first days. It has its roots in the beginning. There may be
stronger feeling, but never the same understanding. It is not your time to know it.”

“Is Aunt Jessica just the same?”

“She forgets herself until life itself seems to forget her. But I saw how her family depend on her, and her sister the most of all. And that fulfils her own need.”

“It seems a pretty good demand on someone who is not too sound. Isn't she supposed to be a thought weak in the nerves?”

“Your cousin, Terence, has offered to teach you for the time, Reuben,” said Benjamin, seeming not to hear his daughter. “And I have accepted his offer.”

“Well, that would be a solution,” said Anna. “There is no school near. And a tutor is never too easy to arrange in a small household.”

“What does Reuben say to that?” said Esmond.

“Of course I thought my education was finished,” said his brother.

“Is Terence to do it out of kindness, Father?” said Anna. “Or are you to make it worth his while?”

“The latter, but it will save me some expense.”

“I daresay the lad will do his best,” said Reuben. “And no doubt he will treat my handicap with delicacy.”

“That is more than can be said of boys at school,” said his sister. “But Terence has troubles in his own family. He ought not to make so much of it.”

“So there will be subjects for us both to avoid.”

“I daresay you could both make blunders, if you tried, but there will be no need to do so.”

“I think you will not regret giving my suggestion a trial,” said Benjamin to Reuben, in his tone of ironic equality. “Terence seems an intelligent young man.”

“Reuben will soon find out if he is not,” said Anna.

“It is his verdict on Reuben that will be the point,” said Bernard.

“When do we pay our respects to the other family, Father?” said Anna.

“I am the bearer of a message asking you all to come tomorrow.”

“In a body?” said Esmond, turning his eyes to his sister.

“Your aunt did not separate you in her invitation,” said Benjamin.

“At what hour do we storm the premises?” said Bernard, also looking at Anna.

“What time, Father?” said the latter.

“At about an hour before luncheon.”

“Happily a time of day when human resistance is still high,” said Bernard.

“I admit that I do not look forward to the meeting,” said Anna. “They all have a way of making me feel on a lower level than themselves.”

“I never put that interpretation on people's ways,” said Claribel. “Perhaps I feel that, if there is any looking down to be done, I am the person to do it.”

“My sister, Jessica, has never looked down on anyone. She is above it,” said Benjamin, implying another standing for those who took this line.

“I know she is a lofty-minded person,” said his cousin. “I always used to feel of the world, worldly, beside her. But we were good friends, and I hope shall be so again. A woman with a family needs a friend, who has escaped her own drudgery in life.”

“She will look with a certain tenderness on me,” said Reuben. “She knows that I cannot remember my mother.”

“As that is the case, you feel no disadvantage,” said Esmond.

“She will feel that is my tragedy, that I do not know what I have missed.”

Esmond was silent over the opposite misfortune.

“Sons lose the most when the mother dies,” said Anna. “I may not be as unhappy as might be thought. There is a certain gain to the daughter in being the mistress of the house. What did Mother die of, Father?”

“Have you never asked that before?” said Esmond.

“I may have, but I forget. I was away at school when it happened; and when I came home, it was all wrapped in silence and mystery, and I did not like to ask. Eighteen is a sensitive age.”

“Which cannot be said of all ages,” muttered her brother.

“There may be evidence that it can't both in you and me. But that is how I felt at the time. I suppose a boy is thicker-skinned.”

“I came home when I knew she was ill.”

“Then of course you knew it all. I did not return until the end of the term, when I arrived to receive the keys of the house at the age of eighteen.”

“Better than giving them up for ever at the age of forty-five,” said Esmond, still in a mutter.

“You had Jenney and Claribel to help you,” said Bernard to his sister.

“Yes, I remember Claribel's arriving to play duenna. But I have the impression that I steered my own course, and more of less that of us all.”

“I was content to observe from a distance,” said her cousin. “I saw no reason to interfere without need. That is not my personal inclination. I am afraid I am not one of the Marthas of the world, popular character though it is. We poor Marys get much less esteem.”

“Well, what did Mother die of?” said Anna, in her blunt manner. “Does anyone know? Do you know, Father?”

“I could hardly fail to. And you shall know also at some fitting time, if it is still your wish.”

Esmond gave his father a glance of sympathy, a rare if not a unique occurrence.

“Oh, don't make me feel as if I were some unfeeling monster, Father. What is there unnatural or unfit in wanting to hear about your own mother's last illness? It was your business to see that I knew. If anyone had asked me about it, we should have looked a strange family. Why can't I be told in a normal way, instead of being made the victim of other people's self-complacence? And of course
I don't want any embarrassing appointments for the future. I can tell you have been with Aunt Jessica. That is just her touch.”

“It was a chill that went to the lungs,” said Benjamin, and said no more.

“Well, what could be more ordinary than that?” said his daughter, rising and hastening to the door on some other concern. “I was almost wondering if it were something equivocal. Such mystery-mongering does no good. It gives any kind of impression. There is no loyalty or sensitiveness about it.”

There followed a long pause.

“So that is the method of dealing with Father,” said Esmond under his breath.

“It is a pity we are above it,” said Bernard.

“I do not agree with you,” said his brother.

“No, I think I am glad to belong to the highly-organised part of the world,” said Claribel, bending towards them, “inconvenient though it may be for me and other people.”

“O GREAT AND good and powerful god, Chung,” said Theodora Calderon, on her knees before a rock in the garden, “protect us, we beseech thee, in the new life that is upon us. For strangers threaten our peace, and the hordes of the alien draw nigh. Keep us in thy sight, and save us from the dangers that beset our path. For Sung Li's sake, amen.”

“For Sung Li's sake, amen,” said her brother.

“Guard us from the boldness of their eyes and the lewdness of their tongues,” went on Theodora. “For their strength is great, and the barbarian heart is within them. Their eyes may be cold on the young, and harsh words may issue from their lips. Therefore have us in thy keeping. For Sung Li's sake, amen.”

“Sung Li is a good name,” said Julius, as they rose from their knees. “Enough like Son and yet not too much like it. It would not do to have them the same.”

“Blasphemy is no help in establishing a deity,” said his sister, in a tone of supporting him. “And the power of Chung is real, though it is only used for those who believe in him. And he would always help people's unbelief.”

“After the age of fourteen his influence fades,” said Julius, in a tone of suggestion.

“Then people have to turn to the accepted faith. Their time of choice is past. But the power of the young gods is real for those who are innocent. That would be the test.”

“But we are not innocent,” said Julius.

“Yes, I think we are. Children's sins are light in the eyes of the gods.”

“We steal things that are not ours, Dora.”

“Yes, but not jewels or money or anything recognised as theft.”

“A sixpence would be thought to be money.”

“But it is not gold or notes or anything that counts to a god.”

But the steps of the pair faltered, and they turned with one accord back to the rock.

“O great and good and powerful god, Chung,” said Dora, as they fell on their knees, “forgive us any sins that go beyond the weakness of youth. Pardon any faults that are grievous in thy sight, for temptation lies in wait. For Sung Li's sake, amen.”

“Temptation does beset us,” said Julius, gaining his feet.

“It is a pity that so much of the pleasure of life depends on sin,” said his sister. “We could not be expected to live quite without joy. No god of childhood would wish it.”

“O powerful god, Chung,” said Julius, in a rapid gabble, turning and inclining his knee, “be merciful to any weakness that approaches real transgression. For Sung Li's sake, amen.”

Dora repeated the last words and made a perfunctory but sincere obeisance, and the pair walked away rather quickly, as if to guard against any impulse to return.

“I wonder what revealed to us that there was a god dwelling in that rock,” said Julius.

“Well, a god would have a temple somewhere. And there would be gods dwelling in the wild rocks and in the hidden places.”

“Yes, of course there would. I wonder if it was fitting to name our gods out of a book that we …”

“Purloined,” said Dora, going into laughter; and the pair rolled along in mirth.

“It was only part of a book,” she said; “and we did not take the real names, only made up some that were like them. And a name with a Chinese sound is more reverent than an English one.”

“We could not call a god John or Thomas,” said her brother, seeking further cause for mirth.

“Or Judas,” said Dora, supplying it.

Julius was a red-haired, round-faced boy of eleven, with large, honest, greenish eyes and ordinary features grouped into an appealing whole. Dora was as like him as was compatible with a greater share of looks, the opposite sex and a year less in age. They both looked sound in body and mind, but a little aloof and mature for their years, as if they steered their own way through a heedless world. A nurse was regarded as a needless expense in their rather haphazard and straitened home; and the housemaid looked after them, and a daily governess taught them, so that their spare time was uncontrolled. It was held that their amusement was their own affair, and confidence on the point was not misplaced, as their pastimes included not only pleasure, but religion, literature and crime. They wrote moral poems that deeply moved them, pilfered coins for the purchase of forbidden goods, and prayed in good faith to the accepted god and their own, perhaps with a feeling that a double share of absolution would not come amiss. As they staggered along in mirth, they forgot its cause, and maintained it from a sense that mirth was a congenial thing.

Their mother came out of some bushes and approached them. “What is the joke?” she said with a smile.

“We were having a comic dance round our Chinese temple,” said Dora, with an instinct to suppress the god.

“I saw you kneeling in front of that rock. That is the temple, is it?”

“Yes, we had to sacrifice to our priest,” said Dora, speaking as though the game were real to her.

“He takes his share of burnt offerings,” said Julius in the same tone.

“Does he live in the rock?” said Mrs. Calderon.

“Yes, it is his temple,” said Dora, with a faint note of impatience, as if at her mother's inattention.

“And what do you sacrifice to him?”

“Flowers and grasses and acorns and things,” said Julius.

“I don't see any of them there.”

“No, if we put them there, it would not seem that he had taken them.”

“Then how do you know what kind of things they are?”

“We have a store of them,” said Julius, “and take some out when there is time to clear them up.”

“And where is the store?” said his mother.

A communication passed between her children, best described by saying that it stopped short of a glance.

“In the cave of the secret offerings,” said Dora, with a touch of solemnity.

“We broach it at the appointed hour,” said Julius. “It is too near to lesson time to-day.”

“I should think it is,” said Mrs. Calderon, something troubled and searching leaving her face. “It is long past ten o'clock. I think you must have known. Now didn't you really guess the time?”

Another interchange of thought occurred and decided the course.

“We … I didn't until I heard the clock strike,” said Dora, in a suitably discomfited tone, raising her eyes to her mother's.

“Well, but that was fifteen minutes ago,” said the latter, with the relieved reproof of one whose view of deceit made other sins virtues beside it. “You know you are wasting your time and keeping Miss Lacy waiting. Didn't you know, Julius?”

“Yes,” said the latter, also raising his eyes. “After the clock had struck, I did.”

“And didn't either of you say anything about it? Didn't you, Dora?”

“No,” murmured Dora, dropping her eyes and stirring the gravel with her shoe. “I thought Julius mightn't have heard.”

“And what about you, my boy? Did you think that Dora had not heard?”

“I didn't know she had,” said Julius, in an abashed undertone.

“Oh, you guilty pair! I hope I shall not hear such a thing again. And now do you expect me to come and steer you through your interview with Miss Lacy?”

“Yes, please,” said Julius and Dora, putting each a hand into hers. “It would be better if you were there.”