“Then shall we have a time together in the mornings? Before your father comes to see me. But I must make one condition. If you are tired of it, you will tell me.”
“Oh, I shall not be tired of it.”
“Then we will begin to-morrow, and people will leave us to each other. And that will give them a rest from me, and be a kindness to them as well as to me. So you will be doing more good than you thought, and you meant to do good, I know.”
“I meant just to please myself.”
“Perhaps Anna’s bluntness is the kind that disguises feeling,” said Esmond to Terence. “How are we to tell it from the other kind?”
“We will not try to, but I hope it is the other kind.”
“It would be hard to have to be embarrassed by it in more than the usual way.”
“Well, we won’t keep on promising to depart, and then not doing so,” said Anna, not looking again at her aunts. “I will marshal my party to the gate, and no one need come to open it for me, as there are three young men to officiate.”
Benjamin rose and gave his arm to Sukey, and led her from the room, as if to protect her from the leave-taking.
“I see how neglected Aunt Sukey has been,” said Terence. “It takes two families to look after her.”
“Well, it is never too late to mend,” said his sister.
“I should think it often is. It probably is this time. Yes, I feel we have let our opportunity pass.”
“Those children may be a help to us,” said Jessica to her husband. “You married into a difficult family, my dear.”
“You are people on too large a scale,” said Thomas, “and your problems seem to be on the same measure. And perhaps smaller people are better able for things. They bring less feeling and less resistance to them.”
“It sounds an inconvenient type,” said Claribel, approaching by herself, as her niece and nephews departed. “And I must plead guilty to belonging to it. It is hard to have a cousin of your own kind, instead of a friend who would bring more convenient and lighter qualities. But I cannot claim to be anything but the typical, strung-up woman of the family. Birds of a feather flock together, and that must be my excuse for bringing more nerves and capacity for various emotions to a place where they exist in plenty.”
“There can be no excuse,” said Terence, in a voice that could almost be heard.
“Well, Father and I will leave you to make the best of these qualities,” said Tullia, taking Thomas’s arm. “It seems a wise step, as I am afraid my portion of them is also on the lavish side.”
Jessica gave a look from Claribel to her daughter.
“Do you see a likeness?” said Claribel.
“Well, I did for a moment.”
“I am always flattered by showing any likeness to the younger generation. It shows that the years have not quite overlaid the thing one was meant to be. One likes to feel that there is a glimpse of it left.”
“I think it always gets clearer,” said Terence.
“Well, I hope that is meant in a complimentary sense.”
“It would hardly have been said, otherwise,” said Thomas, his tone conveying a faint warning to his son.
“We are all about the same height,” went on Claribel, “Jessica and Sukey and me. I know I ought to say ‘I,’ but somehow my lips do not take to that little word; I am at one with Cleopatra there. I often discover in myself an affinity with the characters that we know as friends. I wonder if she was as high as we are. We shall make quite an imposing group, if we are seen about together.”
“We shall share our interest in the young lives about us,” said Jessica, stating another prospect for them.
“And I keep an interest in myself too, and in my own generation. I do not limit my thoughts to the young. I think that experience and knowledge of life often add to people, and bring out what they are. I find myself a more interesting study than when I was a girl. What I see then, is a lighter creature, with less to give. And I find the principle borne out in the young things about me. They have not reached the stage of depths and complexities, and the other things that enhance our value to my mind.”
“You must find Miss Jennings a great support,” said Jessica.
“Yes, she prevents me from being a creature quite apart. I do not feel that I am the only person with memories of the past, and scepticism of the future. I do not live entirely in an atmosphere of hope, that I fear is too ill-founded. But she does not ask as much for herself as I do; she is content with less. I fear I am a grasping person beside her, a person of deeper needs and more demands. I must deal on a larger scale with life. Well, I will take my unsatisfactory self away, and give you a further dose of it later. I will follow my youthful and unsophisticated flock.”
The people thus described were walking in a group towards their home.
“Well, we have had the initiation into our new life,” said Anna. “It strikes me that there will be a degree of responsibility involved in it.”
“People in Aunt Sukey’s situation ought not to be at large,” said Esmond. “They can do other people nothing but harm.”
“They may limit their concern to themselves in the time they have left,” said Bernard.
“Bernard has gone overboard about Aunt Sukey,” said Anna. “She will be competing with Cook and Ethel for his esteem.”
“I thought I saw signs of your yielding to her spell, yourself,” said her brother.
“Yes, I have fallen a victim,” said Anna, pursuing her way into the house, “and have let myself in for the consequences. It is not in my line to listen to people’s last words and that sort of thing, but I shall have to get up to the level.”
“Well, how have you managed with it all?” said Jenney, who had come home early by herself.
“I think we got through with credit,” said Anna at once. “Anyhow three of us are to go there every day, Reuben to learn from Terence, and Father and I to attend upon Aunt Sukey, at our different times and in our different ways.”
“You are to do that, are you? So you got on well with her. And I hear she is not the easiest person. She is supposed to make trouble.”
“She hardly needs to do that, as far as she is concerned, herself,” said Bernard.
“No, poor thing, I can see she is very ill. It must be dreadful to live with all those well people, feeling you are in that state yourself.”
“You have expressed her exact view,” said Esmond.
“Well, anyone would feel the same.”
“The words, ‘poor thing,’ hardly give her,” said Bernard.
“Bernard has lost his heart,” said Anna. “He had eyes and ears for no one else. And I am somewhat in the same case. She does exert her own spell.”
Benjamin’s voice came from behind.
“This is a good word to me, my daughter. I hoped you had enough of me in you, to see my sister as I see her, and it seems it is the case. This may be a growing time for all of us.”
“Why do people think it is such a good thing for people to take after them, even when they have no particular self-esteem?” murmured Bernard. “I don’t think Father has any great opinion of himself.”
“But doubtless a better one than he has of his family,” said Esmond. “Indeed he implies it.”
“We shall have to go forward a bit, if we are to accompany Aunt Sukey to the brink of the grave,” said Anna. “We were not expecting any such thrust onwards. But the hopeful point is that with her it is easier than you would think. She seems to carry one with her.”
“It seems unfair to take advantage of that, and then to turn back ourselves,” said Bernard.
“So much so, my son, that you will understand, if that feeling is at times too much for her,” said Benjamin.
“I hardly knew I was Father’s son before,” murmured Bernard. “I only just knew that Anna was his daughter, though that is not his fault.”