Elders and Betters (36 page)

“We want to keep to it,” said Florence, and looked at Thomas for support.

“Can you never do yourself justice at a crucial moment, Tullia? Never show the whole of yourself at a time of test?”

“I don't know what you would say to the whole of myself at this moment. I am keeping back a good deal. Oh, I know you would pay me with flattery, if I encouraged you in a mistake that would break both your lives. I do not find the reward worth while. I have seen Terence do it, and now I am to see you. And this will go further than mere dreariness and disillusionment. It will not stop short of the ridiculous. The sublime comes near to it. Perhaps you do
not know how near. And you who were married to Mother, and linked with a unique and experienced spirit! To lose hold of yourself like this!”

“Perhaps I found it too much for me, Tullia. Even a sacred burden may be a heavy one. Do you grudge me the relief and lightness that have come my way?”

“It was hard on us all, of course. But we have not seen it a reason for this sort of collapse. At least I suppose everyone has, with the exception of me.” Tullia ended on a retrospective note, and seemed to leave the matter.

“You grudge it to me, Tullia?” said Thomas.

“Well, let him have his rest and play then,” said Tullia, after a pause. “Let him gambol a little in private, before he settles down to his ordinary life. But let him beware how he exhibits the antics in public. Friends and family will not put on rose-coloured spectacles to witness them. As he saw those of Anna and Terence, so they will see these of even more discrepant years. It is wise to remember it.”

She went into the drawing-room, and her father would have followed, but a look from Florence sent him into the library, and Tullia heard the door close.

The families assembled at luncheon, supplemented by Claribel, Jenney, Miss Lacy and Florence. The last named sat in silence at the side of the table, and did not look towards the head. Tullia sat at the bottom, as she had done since her mother's death, and things were as usual except for the tension in the air. Miss Lacy knew of the impending revelation, and maintained an effort to be normal, with almost too much success. She had broken the news to her pupils, feeling it a wise precaution, and they sat with their eyes on Florence, while they followed the enjoinder of silence. Tullia was lively and loquacious, but seemed hardly to follow her own words. Anna and Terence were preoccupied in different ways with each other. Thomas did his duties with a face that was at once inscrutable, emotional and resolute. When he had finished there came a pause, and as he took his seat, it grew to something else.

“What is coming?” said Bernard.

“Something enlivening, I hope!” said Claribel.

“Don't be too sure,” said Tullia in an amused, untroubled tone. “That is not the word I should give to it.”

“You know what it is, then?” said Claribel.

“Well, naturally my father's secrets find their home in my ear. But this is not one that would command the sympathy of anyone who did not know him. We must not expect too much of you. It needed experience of him, to anticipate and follow it.”

Florence turned her eyes on Tullia.

“We are all keyed-up and waiting,” said Claribel.

“You have been my friends in more than one trouble,” said Thomas. “And now I ask you to show yourselves so in my joy.” He rose and came round the table to Florence, and placing his hands on her shoulders, moved them down her arms until they reached her hands and held them. “I hope you see what is coming to me. My home is not to continue without a mistress.”

There was a pause.

“Well, that is not a very nice way to allude to it during my management,” said Tullia, looking round with a smile. “Or of betraying any complaints that I found the task uncongenial. I am inclined to take it ill.”

“Do you mean that you are going to be married?” said Claribel, in a shrill tone to Thomas.

“I mean it,” said Thomas.

“Then of course we congratulate you,” said Claribel, letting her voice fall, and looking round with a bewildered air.

“I thank you,” said Thomas, “and I am sure I may thank you all.”

“I am sure you may,” said his daughter. “They are all metaphorically falling over each other in their eagerness to overwhelm you with felicitations. Especially as they seem so necessary to your content.”

“Have you been a party to the plan?” said Claribel,
turning to Tullia with her eyebrows raised, as if at an unexpected circumstance.

“Well, in so far as it was entrusted to me. I had no hand in making and furthering it. I am glad the seal is lifted, and that I may relax the watch upon my tongue. Secrets always seem to be guilty somehow, though I have persuaded my poor father that it is not the case with his.”

“Did you know before we told you?” said Florence, from her place.

“Well, I have eyes that see, and a father accustomed to being understood. I do not force him to put things into words. I never have.”

“And you will be glad to be relieved of the responsibility of the house?” said Claribel, her mouth still slightly open.

“Well, apart from my sense of being deposed, and made use of as a temporary deputy, and other such feelings,” said Tullia, seeming to speak simply without reserves, “I shall resume my old place with the relief of a return to my own. It seems to have become sacred to me somehow. I am always sorry for anyone transplanted to a new one. I could never feel that any other quite came up to it.”

“One's own place, one's own room, one's own desk,” said Miss Lacy, in a comprehending whisper. “They are all so superior to other people's.”

“You are behaving very well for all that,” said Anna to her cousin. “I would not answer for my own behaviour, if Father had planted such a thing on me, while I was still settled in his house.”

“How will you like managing the house and having two growing stepchildren?” said Claribel to Florence, still with her air of being stunned by the shock.

“The children will be Father's and mine,” said Tullia, in a manner so incidental that it hardly required her to move her eyes. “I know what my mother wished for them. There will be no change there.”

“Well, that is the right and natural prospect for them,” said Miss Lacy, in a considering, unprejudiced tone.

“Will Tullia be Florence's stepchild? Or is it only us?” said Julius.

“All of us, from Terence to you,” said Tullia. “But it will not make any difference to her. She need not trouble about it.”

“I suppose she will owe us a certain duty,” said Dora.

“I don't know why you should assume that. She owes nothing to anyone in this house.”

“Will she sleep in Father's room, as Mother used to?”

Tullia looked at her father and slightly raised her shoulders, as if not responsible for these results of his course.

“Yes, she will,” said Thomas.

“Would Mother like her to do that?”

“She would see it was the right place for her.”

“She might have the dressing-room instead of Father,” said Julius. “That would prevent things from being quite the same.”

“Of course Mother can look down and see,” said Dora. “It almost seems a pity that people can do that. It might prevent them from having perfect bliss.”

Tullia looked down and seemed to be trying not to laugh; Miss Lacy gave herself to free and natural amusement; and Florence looked up with a smile.

“In heaven there is no marrying or giving in marriage,” said Julius.

“Then in one particular it is different from earth,” said Tullia.

The children broke into mirth.

“Some of us observe the celestial standard,” said Miss Lacy to Claribel.

“We are not of the earth, earthy,” said the latter, slightly contracting her brows at the condition she named.

“Why doesn't Uncle Benjamin marry another wife?” said Julius.

“Perhaps because he feels he is already in heaven,” muttered Esmond.

“Everyone doesn't do it,” said Dora,

“I suppose most widowers,” said Anna, tersely, suggesting that her own situation did not blind her to general truth.

“I suppose it has been an experience to live with one who is an exception,” said Claribel, her voice not implying that it had been an especially absorbing one.

“I suppose Uncle Benjamin could marry you, if he liked,” said Julius.

“If Father had married Miss Lacy,” said Dora, “there would not have had to be so much change.”

“Now you two have talked enough,” said Tullia.

“What do you feel about the marriage of your niece to a widower so much older?” said Claribel to Miss Lacy, keeping her eyes on the latter's face after her speech.

“I do not blame him for being a widower. I do not blame him for his age. I would not accept blame on similar grounds. As for the approach of soul to soul, it is a matter for the souls themselves, and I say nothing.”

“They will make an odd pair enough,” said Anna.

“No, I do not think odd,” said Miss Lacy; “I do not think that is the word.”

“I meant oddly matched,” said Anna. “I hope you don't mind our voicing our thoughts, but there really is rather a discrepancy.”

“What we call one,” said Miss Lacy.

“How did you feel, when someone said you were behaving well?” said Bernard to Tullia.

“It was only Anna, wasn't it?” said Tullia, in so light a voice that it hardly uttered the words.

“Well, if someone responsible for her words had said it, how would you have felt?”

“I think I should have agreed. Indeed I do agree. I am conscious of a definite feeling of self-complacence.”

“I am glad you are in such a hard and unhappy, not to say humiliating position.”

“Why?”

“Because you need to be rescued from it.”

“I am content to return to my old habits, those I formed for myself.”

“People will be sorry for you, and no one is satisfied with that. They will say that your father has filled your place.”

“They will be wrong,” said Tullia, seeming to speak to herself.

Bernard looked at his uncle and saw that his eyes were upon them.

“He could not grudge you to me, now that he has supplanted you. I don't mean in his heart; I mean in ways that count. And are you really not jealous of Florence? I cannot help asking. You know I am Anna's brother.”

“I might be, if I had any reason.”

“Then your situation is impossible. People will think you have reason, when you have none. What could be worse than that?”

“Having reason,” said Tullia.

“But your father is going to be married. I don't see how you can pass that over. Other people will not. We can see that they don't.”

“Well, he could not marry his daughter,” said Tullia, “any more than Terence could marry his sister.”

“I am fortunate in your admirers. If they had not been related, you might have married so many. When shall we announce our engagement?”

“What makes you think we have made one?”

“Well, you would have married all your relatives, if they had not been too near. I am the only one who is not. That does seem to settle it.”

“I ought to feel complacent,” said Tullia. “They say that the best women appeal to their families.”

“Shall we announce it at the table? Or shall I ask for an interview with Uncle Thomas? Which would be more painful to him? I feel that he deserves to suffer.”

Tullia laughed.

“I think we will announce it now,” said Bernard. “Then his suffering will be as public as he allowed yours to be.”

“I had none, except what came from other people's opinions.”

“That is the last kind to be made public. He ought to have known that. His mind must have been full of someone else. It is a horrid thing to have to say of him, and we must hope that a lesson will do him good. Uncle Thomas, may I follow your example, and use this occasion for an announcement of my own?”

“What is in your mind, my boy?” said Thomas.

“I am glad that you call me that, as it is what I am going to be. You are to have another son.”

“What is this?” said Thomas.

“I see you understand the language used between men.”

“What is this, Tullia?” said Thomas.

“I have told you what it is,” said Bernard. “It was for me to take everything upon myself.”

“Tullia, is there any truth in what he says?”

“Why should you be incredulous?” said Bernard. “She is doing a thing that you like to do, yourself.”

“Tullia has always looked to me for everything. Tullia, are you doing this, because I am going to be married?”

“Why should it not be because she is inclined to be married herself? She may be your true daughter. I expect you think she is.”

Thomas did not turn his eyes to his nephew.

“Tullia, my dear, you do not think I would ever fail you?”

“Well, filling my mother's place, without consulting me, was coming rather near to it.”

“I thought you would wish for my happiness.”

“I am crediting you with a like regard for mine.”

“Florence would do her best for you.”

“That must seem to me an odd way to talk to me of a girl younger than myself.”

Thomas was silent for a moment.

“Would you be marrying your cousin, if I had not done as I have?”

“I think we are entertaining the table too much at our expense. I am glad to be a success as a hostess, but we must know where to draw the line.”

“We are having a most exciting luncheon!” said Claribel. “We are very grateful to all four of you.”

“Three marriages and two deaths!” said Anna. “I hope it is not true that all things come in threes.”

“Marriages and deaths come in larger numbers,” said Miss Lacy.

“Wouldn't Tullia like to be here with Florence?” said Dora.