“I must be forgiven for ushering in such a horde of brothers,” said her niece. “There did not seem to be any way of making their number less.”
“It is a good thing our numbers are not reversed,” said Esmond to Bernard, keeping his eyes from his relatives as completely as he assumed theirs were on him. “There might be no hope of forgiveness.”
“Well, what a dwarf I feel beside you all!” said Anna. “I ought to be related to you, Uncle Thomas, instead of to all these thoroughbreds. We shall keep each other in countenance; that is one thing.”
“None of you is changed except this little one,” said Jessica. “And I think the difference is that he is not so little. Your leg is stronger, my boy. I see that it is.”
“He is taller than I am,” said Anna. “It was a humiliating moment when I found myself overtopped for the third time.”
“Such moments must come to the only sister in a family.”
“Oh, I am much shorter for a woman than the elder boys are for men,” said Anna, who could seldom let a statement pass. “And Reuben seems to be following in their wake.”
“My daughter and I balance each other,” said Benjamin, who was watching his family with emotions that almost escaped him.
“Well, what do you think of all of us?” said Sukey, from her place. “We have passed our verdict on you, and have now to succeed you in the dock.”
“Oh, I see little signs of time scattered about,” said Anna, casting her eyes from face to face. “That is the only thing, I think.”
“I suppose Aunt Sukey cannot have improved,” said Bernard. “The advance must be in me.”
“She has always been the show piece, hasn’t she?” said his sister.
“I must remember that handsome is as handsome does,” said Sukey, with a smile.
“And Tullia has made an advance,” said Anna, in a casual manner. “She was in a distinctly more coltish stage, if I remember.”
“It is natural for the years to pass,” said her cousin.
“Can it be?” said Terence. “It seems so wasteful and wicked, when we only have a certain number of them.”
“Nature is known to be red in tooth and claw,” said Anna. “She snatches things from us all the time. I have found it even at my age.”
“I never think of it,” said Tullia. “I suppose I am too forgiving.”
“I forgive Nature nothing,” said Terence. “Least of all our death at last from natural causes.”
“You are too young to realise it,” said Anna to Tullia. “There must be seven years between us.”
“I am twenty-two,” said her cousin.
“Oh, eight then,” said Anna.
“I feel I shall gain with the years,” said Bernard, “but I think that is generally other people’s gain.”
“I feel I have the gift of perennial youth,” said Terence.
“I think Anna has it,” said Sukey. “I never saw anyone look so young for her age.”
“Oh, I am often accused of that,” said her niece. “I sometimes suspect a suggestion of crudeness and un-development.”
“There is none from me,” said Sukey, smiling. “I should hardly have so much opinion of the effects of time. An invalid of fifty-three has no great welcome for them.”
“We people with less to lose have an advantage there,” said Anna. “I often feel that I shall be quite a passable person in middle age. It must be hard to feel your superiority slipping away all the time. Not that anyone in our generation will reach your level. It is a case of elders and betters indeed.”
“It serves people right for feeling superior,” said Jessica.
“Oh, they can’t help their personal endowments,” said her niece.
“It is a good thing we are not responsible for them,” said Sukey, changing her tone as she spoke. “It is strange for me to feel that all that I am, may come to an end on any day. I wonder if all of you know it. Had you heard of it, Anna, my dear?”
“I believe we did hear that something had gone wrong with your heart,” muttered Anna, not meeting her eyes. “Father did say something about it.”
“Was it not a little more than that?” said Sukey, bending forward.
“Yes, of course it was. It was put in the natural way,” said Bernard. “But Anna is quite right not to face it. It is too much for us to believe.”
“So I face it alone,” said Sukey, as if she were speaking to herself. “I cannot put it from me. I go on with my life, not knowing on what day or at what hour my change will come.”
“I don’t suppose we can any of us be sure of that,” said Anna.
“We simply feel it will not come,” said Terence.
“I am glad you can do that,” said Sukey, in a tone in which irony and honesty seemed to contend.
“All this nobility and tragedy is rather much for us,” muttered Anna. “We were hardly prepared for it.”
“Come and sit by me, my little nephew,” said Sukey, seeing Reuben’s eyes fixed on her face. “You and I know what it is to halt through life behind other people, and it is so good that for you those days are past.”
Reuben took the place, and his aunt put her arm about him.
“Quite a touching scene,” said Anna. “We shall all wish we were disabled in some way.”
“My sister’s disability is real enough,” said Esmond to Terence. “She deserves some compensation.”
“I daresay it is,” said Anna, overhearing. “I am downright and outspoken and anything you please, but they may not be such desperate disadvantages compared with other people’s. You and I are not a suave and finished pair, and there is an end of it.”
“I trust it is not the beginning,” said Bernard.
Jessica smiled on her brother’s motherless flock, in a simpler kindness than that she felt for her own. It was free from the strain and anxiety of her nearest feeling.
Benjamin rose and walked, as if by chance, by Esmond, and spoke in the husky mutter that had become an omen.
“Perhaps you will try to improve the impression you have made. It is not an advantage to us to be related to a savage.”
“I know it is not,” said his son, and said no more.
Sukey looked up in surprise at a manifestation new to her, and Benjamin glanced from her to his son with a mingled discomfiture and pride, that could have appeared on no other face.
“Here are Claribel and Jenney coming to swell our ranks,” said Anna. “I thought they were full enough for a beginning. And it seems rather the moment for a diversion.”
“Well, have the young people made their impression?” said Claribel, advancing with her deliberate stride. “I felt we should not be present at the more intimate reunion. But perhaps we may now contribute what we have to give. What an elaborate conversation piece! I feel I shall be quite lost in the midst of it.” She proceeded to this point of the group.
“Well, you see that the years have gone by,” said Thomas.
“It sounds as if Uncle Thomas had been rather struck by the signs of it,” said Anna.
“I never think as much of the years as other people,” said Claribel. “I seem to be one by myself there. They seem to leave me essentially the same, and so I see other people with the same eyes, and there does not seem to me all that difference. I don’t know what havoc you think has been worked in me. Mercifully I am unconscious of it.”
“I am sure you may be,” said Sukey. “I am the person for whom that is impossible.”
“I don’t think you have much to complain of,” said Claribel, looking into her face. “No more than you ever had, as far as I can see. But that is my characteristic reaction.”