“It might not have been an occasion for broth. There must be other needs in the last days of a human life.”
“But it was, I suppose,” said Thomas. “And it was likely that it should be, as it was the hour. Anyhow here it is, and the situation is met.”
“It is not even grasped, I think,” said Sukey.
“The bell must be answered, of course,” said Jessica. “We must be able to depend on that. Perhaps Tullia could listen for it in the mornings.”
“My life hardly allows of my spending hours of each day in a single spot,” said Tullia, in a distinct, deliberate tone. “For my time, as you know, involves Father’s.”
“Did you hear the bell to-day?” said her mother.
“I heard it, and thought it was for the broth, and assumed that the servants were bringing it, and seem to have been right.”
Sukey put the tray aside, as if she were past such a need.
“Your attack of nerves should have come at some other moment,” said Thomas, in a lighter tone.
“I cannot time them, can I? I would time even the hour of my death for you, if I could. But the suspense and uncertainty are given me to bear, and I must be helped to sustain them. I am doing my very best. I hope you believe me. But different needs may arise, must arise, the doctors tell me. Their words do not make an impression, except on me, but I can hardly forget them.”
“Working yourself into a state over nothing can only do you harm,” said Tullia.
“It is nothing to be left alone to die,” said Sukey, turning a sad smile on Tullia’s parents, as if the words would be lost upon her youth. “I see it is to those who are not threatened by it. I should not have thought it would be quite that. I should have thought that some memory of it would follow you through your happy and useful hours. But I must be glad it is not so.”
“Sukey, you are doing harm to yourself and to my wife,” exclaimed Thomas.
Sukey put out her hand to her sister.
“So there is someone who suffers a little for me, who is not quite reconciled to the thought of my prime and my powers being wasted. A little suffering is inseparable from it, Thomas; we have to pay the price of love. But it shall be as light as I can make it.”
Jessica knelt by her sister’s chair, and they clasped each other. Thomas looked on with a frown and a restless foot, and Tullia held her head so high that she looked over them. Anna opened the door and came to a standstill.
“They told me to come straight upstairs,” she said.
“And the advice strikes you as rash,” said Thomas.
“Well, I don’t want to rush in where an angel would fear to tread.”
“I want you,” said Sukey, holding out her hand. “I don’t think I realised how great my need would be, of someone not wearied of the sight and sound of me. You may not have come at a happy moment, but you have come at the right one.”
“You might all be about to be dead and buried,” said Anna, advancing into the room.
“Well, even I am not quite that at the moment. So we will forget the likelihood of my being so soon, and have a happy time together, as if I were an ordinary, tough, old aunt.”
“I am glad you are not that,” said Anna.
“So there is someone besides my sister, who sees some good in my being what I am; someone who does not think that health and strength to be self-sufficient are quite everything. I know they are a great deal. Who should know it better?”
“Oh, there is plenty of health and strength about,” said her niece.
“And yet there is not a little bit over for me, not one little share out of all there is. Well, I must not complain. It is time I learned that.”
“I should soon let people hear about it, if I were in your place.”
“Yes one does begin in that way. It seems at first that eyes and thoughts would turn to the person whose yoke is heavy. It is rather a hard lesson, to learn that they turn away. There is so much health about, as you say, that there hardly seems to be room for anything else. Sometimes I could almost wish there were a little less, or a little less of the things that go with it. But I should be glad that my dear ones have it, when I would give so much for it myself.”
“I should think it might be the most trying thing in the world, to see it all about you.”
“I must not agree to that, but I may be grateful for the understanding that lies behind it. For I am tempted to get tired of living apart, to want to go back to the life I shared with other people. You see my time for leaving it has come so soon. But I have to try to wean myself from it; and you may be able to help me; for as I grow weaker, the effort does not get less.”
“I will do anything I can,” said Anna.
“We have received our dismissal,” said Thomas to his wife, “and the aid will be better administered without us. Not that our presence seems to be felt as a check.”
“Anna is a change,” said Jessica, as they gained the passage. “I forget how much one is needed. I ought to be on the watch. But an attempt to be different might only defeat itself.”
“Sukey would be poorly off, if you had any success in such an effort.”
“I am so little for her to depend upon. I have come to live for myself. I should not have married, if my being personally satisfied was to seem enough.”
“You are not always so conscious of your own good fortune,” said Tullia.
“No, I am ill to please even in my sunny place. So what of my sister, living always in the shadow?”
“Well, Anna will give an hour to her, and Benjamin another,” said Thomas. “And Tullia will come with her father. She has done her part.”
Jessica looked after her husband and daughter, and her pride in Tullia, her jealousy of Thomas’s joy in her, her sorrow for the sin in her feeling, followed each other over her face. The cloud in his eyes lifted as he turned to his daughter. Her easy experience and blindness to her mother’s soothed him and set things in a clearer light. Her love for him met his need the better, that it was not a weightier thing. Thomas had had his fill of strength and depth of feeling.
Anna came out of her aunt’s room, distraught and flushed, as if she had been engaged on something foreign to herself. She caught sight of her father, and paused and drew a deep breath, before she met him.
“Well, Father, I have done my best with this odd new task. And now I leave you to continue it. I think I have scored a mild success. Anyhow I have not been blamed or dismissed, and my good offices are welcome to-morrow. The question is whether I can keep it up. But be that as it may, I can’t think that the methods employed with Aunt Sukey in this house are the right or fair ones.”
“Ours must be different, and that will be something,” said Benjamin. “It cannot be laid to one sister’s account, that she is not a change for the other. The more she does for her, the less that can be.”
“New brooms sweep clean, of course. But old ones may be better cast aside, and I maintain that it is the case with these. Meanwhile, let us sweep clean while we can.”
Anna left the house, not seeking a word with anyone. She had come for a purpose, fulfilled it, and did not linger. Thomas and his daughter emerged as they heard the gate, and Terence followed their example.
“I cannot bear opening that gate for people,” he said. “I hate to hear their perfunctory thanks. Chivalry to women does not come to me naturally. I do not think anything did. I have a sort of innocent selfishness; at least I hope it is regarded as innocent; of course I know its real nature myself.”
“Anna will not feel the omission,” said Tullia. “Manners are scarce in her family. It did not take long to see it.”
“Uncle Benjamin has his own greatness of behaviour. I would emulate it, if I did not suspect that it had its root in unselfishness. If the root were in anything else, I would really try.”