Elders and Betters (33 page)

“Our passions waxed strong within us,” said Dora, unconsciously falling into the idiom of another sphere of her life.

Julius gave her a nudge of warning.

“You did not hit your sister, did you, my boy?” said Thomas, struck by something battered in his daughter's aspect, but assuming that his son would not transgress a certain limit.

“No,” said Julius, in a honest tone, producing no change on Dora's face, and only a momentary one on Terence's.

“Well, will you promise me never to fight each other again?”

“Yes,” said the children, concerned simply with ending the interview.

“Are you thinking what you are saying?”

“Yes.”

“Well, we will hope for the best,” said Thomas, rising with a smile and a sigh.

“Are you dull downstairs by yourself?” said Dora.

“Not more than I must be. Tullia is very good to me,” said Thomas, stroking her hair with the vaguely double purpose of caressing and smoothing it.

Dora flung herself into his arms.

“We do think about Mother; we think about her all the time.”

“I am sure you do,” said Thomas, reversing his opinions with what seemed to his children a commendable generosity. “And as you get older, you will think about her more and more.”

“And now sit down and get on with your tea,” said Tullia. “It will be bedtime before you have begun.”

The children laughed, and Thomas gave them a smile and followed his daughter.

Julius and Dora set to their meal in a rather formal manner, that arose from their sense of the latter's outbreak
and the impossibility of referring to it. Terence laid down his book and joined in the talk, and afterwards resumed it and remained at the table, feeling his presence a safeguard.

Julius fetched the notebook and laid it on the table before his sister.

“What is that for?” she said.

“The other entry,” said Julius, proffering a pencil.

“What about?”

“Hypocrisy.”

“What hypocrisy?”

“About Mother. Always thinking about her,” said Julius, on a patient note.

“Oh,” said Dora, after a slight pause, looking at her brother with widening eyes, “I can't be held responsible for being caught up in a scene that had to be got through somehow. You didn't help, did you? We could not worry the god with things like that. Everyone can't simply stand apart and think they are superior because of it; we might make an entry about that. I don't take you to task for doing nothing, and then being proud of it, and want us to take the matter to the god.”

Julius carried the notebook to the shelf and returned to the table.

“Shall we have a game?” he said.

Dora produced some boards and boxes from a drawer, and they settled to a game compounded of several, according to the proportion of pieces that survived. Presently Dora spoke in a preoccupied tone.

“I suppose our new life is fairly under way now?”

“There will be some more fits and starts,” said Julius. “We shall be supposed to be settled in a routine, and then condemned for being in it. Or we shall be supposed to be thinking about Mother, and then reproached for not putting our minds into our lessons. Oh, I know how it will be.”

“Perhaps Father will begin never to talk about Mother,” said Dora, holding a piece over the board.

“Well, I must say one sees the reason of it. If people can't talk about their dead in a natural way, they had better be silent. It is an insult to their memories to indulge in the sort of talk that took place just now.”

Dora lifted her eyes.

“I mean that we heard from Father,” said Julius at once. “It is pure self-indulgence; that is what it is.”

“Of course we did fight,” said Dora.

“Well, and why not?” said her brother, with increasing violence. “Are we children or are we not? Are we likely to have the ways of a man and woman, or are we not? Had we been through an impossible day through no fault of our own, or had we not? Is it our fault that Mother is dead? I should like to hear Father answer those questions.”

“You did not ask them,” said Dora.

“The time was not ripe. The moment is not yet. But I hold them in store. And then let Father rue the day.”

“I don't suppose you would dare to ask them. And it wouldn't be any good to make him hate you.”

“There is such a thing as wholesome respect,” said Julius.

“We are in his power,” said Dora. “I suppose he could starve us if he liked.”

“Whatever base and dastardly thing he contemplates,” said Julius, striking an attitude, and losing sight as readily as his sister of Thomas's having no inhuman tendencies, “whatever dark meditations have a place in his heart, there is no easy way for him towards them; there is no royal road. So let him keep the truth in his heart and ponder it.”

“He gives us food and clothes and has us taught,” said Dora, in a dubious tone, uncertain if mere fulfilment of duty should operate in her father's favour.

“The minimum that a man could do,” said Julius. “The least amount of expense and thought, that would save him from the contempt of all mankind. Would you have him turn us out into the waste to starve? Would you have him cast us forth, as if no tie bound us?”

“As if we were not his kith and kin,” said Dora, falling into her brother's tone. “As if we were penniless orphans, driven to seek a moment's shelter within his doors. As if no sacred tie of blood bound us, hand and heart to heart.”

“Let him take thought for the dark retribution that is gathering,” said Julius, with a deep frown. “Let him take counsel with himself. That is all I have to say.”

“The bread he has cast upon the waters, will return after many days,” said Dora. “Then will he repent the grudging spirit that stayed his hand.”

Terence rose and left the room, disturbed by the activities of his brother and sister, whom he believed to be acting some kind of play, a view in which he was right.

“WELL, I HAVE a piece of news to break to you,” Said Anna, entering the drawing-room with her usual haste, but avoiding the eyes of her family. “Say what you will, it is going to come true, so you had better make up your minds to it.”

“Is it such unlikely news?” said Bernard.

“Well, it is of the kind that one's own family may tend to find surprising. I don't know that it is so in itself.”

“It concerns yourself, does it?” said Esmond.

“So the incredulity is starting from the bottom. I will wait for it to run its course.”

“It sounds as if you were going to be married,” said Jenney with a laugh, as if this were not a possible explanation.

“That is what I was going to say,” said Claribel.

“Right the first time,” said Anna, in a laconic manner.

“What?” said her brothers.

“I said you would think it improbable.”

“What are you saying, my daughter?” said Benjamin.

“So it is as unlikely as all that, Father?”

“Who is the fortunate man?” said Esmond.

“So family irony is about to begin,” said his sister, settling herself in a chair, as though to await it. “It will have to wear itself out. So I will let it go ahead.”

“We are entitled to know as much as that,” said Benjamin. “Indeed it can hardly be kept from us.”

“Do you need telling?” said Anna, looking her father in the eyes, as if the subject held no reserves for her. “How many men have I been thrown with lately? How many have I known since we have been here?”

“I can only think of your cousin.”

“Right again,” said Anna.

“Terence!” said several voices.

“Well, there is no objection to the marriage of cousins, is there?”

“There is from our point of view,” said Claribel. “The first marriage of the family spoilt by its not bringing any change! Cannot you wait until you can offer us a proper stranger?”

“Well, I did not have to help you so much, did I?”

“Does Terence want to marry you?” said Reuben.

“Well, I have his word for it.”

“You have that, clear and certain?” said Benjamin.

His daughter laughed.

“Would you say that I am the sort of woman to think that every man who shows me a normal friendship, wants to make me the offer of his hand and heart? Do I strike you in that way, Father? People may not take much interest in their families, but they can hardly be quite so blind.”

“Well, what a piece of news!” said Jenney, in an excited tone. “The first we have had for a long time. The first of a happy kind, I mean.”

“One of the sort was due,” said Bernard. “We are grateful to Anna for breaking the trend of events. It was time that it was checked.”

“The first reasonably pleasant words I have heard,” said his sister.

“When was the fateful question put?” said Esmond.

“I gave the fateful answer yesterday. The question had run the course of all such questions, or many of them, I suppose.”

“You kept Terence in suspense? Did that add to your value?”

“Well, you sounded as if you thought that was desirable.”

“You did decide to give the affirmative answer?” said Claribel, as if she would hardly have expected this.

“Anna has done nothing, if she has not made that clear,” said Bernard.

“I did not expect this particular line of incredulity,” said his sister.

“Oh, I only wanted a little feminine gossip,” said Claribel.

“It is not quite the kind of thing one gossips about. Well, how do you all like the thought of your life without me?”

Reuben looked at his sister in a startled manner.

“I must hear more of it, my daughter,” said Benjamin.

“You have heard all I have to tell. It is not such a strange piece of news. I suppose nothing is more common than two young people's marrying, though one is inclined to get wrought-up over it, when it involves oneself. I suppose it is the commonest thing after birth and death.”

“But, like them, it is not usually passed over,” said Bernard.

“Oh, I do not believe in having one's little material for excitement wrested away from one,” said Claribel. “It may be trivial and commonplace and anything you please, but it is the interest we have at the moment, and I am going to make the most of it. I cannot only give my attention to the important things of life. I have my own sympathy with all the little human chances and changes.”

“This is an important thing to me,” said Benjamin, looking at his daughter. “What are Terence's prospects of supporting a wife?”

“I should not think he has any,” said Anna as if the thought occurred to her for the first time. “Such things are not much in his line, are they? But I think we ought not to be short of money. I had not given much thought to that side of things.”

“And has Terence given none at all?”

“I don't know,” said Anna, lightly shaking her head. “I daresay.”

“I should think that can hardly be said,” said Esmond.

“Well, I hope it can't,” said his sister. “It will be a great help if he has a turn for such matters. I can do with a little support in them. I don't want to be always turning to
Father, and I don't suppose Terence would want it for me either.”

“Did Terence go on his knees?” said Reuben.

Claribel laughed and awaited Anna's answer with raised brows.

“He did what corresponded to it for him, I suppose,” said Anna, reaching towards a book. “That moment must bring out a man in a new light. Terence did things in his own way, as you would expect. But he made his meaning clear and served his purpose.”

“He is some years younger than you,” said Benjamin.

“Oh, yes, yes,” said Anna with easy impatience. “He is marrying me for my money, and I am old enough to be his aunt, and he is not prepared to work for me, and all the rest. But there is something about him that I happen to want; and no doubt he would say the same of me. You do not suppose that we have not considered our own future.”

“You said you had not,” said Esmond.

“People may accept certain things and regret them afterwards,” said Benjamin.

“Then they must be silly people,” said his daughter. “We regret them now. Terence wishes from his heart that he had more to offer me; that he was the right age, and had normal prospects, and all of it. But such things can't be altered, and he does not want to miss the main thing, because he cannot have the secondary ones.”

“So you have made up your mind?” said Benjamin.

“Well, at the age you think so advanced, I ought to be capable of it. And I suppose you were in the same mind as Terence in your time?”

“My position was different.”

“Yes, of course, Mother was younger than you, and you had a profession and private means, and everything in your favour. But you were not Terence, and so I hardly think I should have wanted you so much. And Mother was not me, and so I daresay Terence would have been of similar mind. And we may have our own share of good fortune.
Indeed my having money of my own does strike me like that.” Anna spokeas if the thought had just occurred to her.

“Well, from my heart I wish for your happiness, my daughter.”

“But you are afraid that you hope for the impossible. Well, time will show.”

“It is time that holds the threat, when the woman is older than the man,” said Esmond.

“Oh, I am not quite a hundred. And Terence is an ageless sort of person. I declare I wish I had brought him to this interview, and had not tried to steer the course by myself.”

“Women are expected to face the disagreeables of life,” said Claribel, not specifying who held the view in this case.

“Well, I have hopes that I shall be an exception. Terence is a person to take that sort of thing off me. He was coming to-day, but family duties intervened. And the ordeal is not as much as all that. You are not such awe-inspiring people. You are just simple and callow and critical, as people in your stage must be. I may be an aged crone, but to every state its advantages.”