“It was clearly not a woman’s business,” said Reuben, shortly.
“Nor a boy’s either, as you saw it,” said Esmond.
“Well, perhaps it was not,” said Thomas.
“The youngest would have the most life to lose,” said Anna. “He would be making the greatest sacrifice.”
“It must be recognised that the palm goes to Miss Jennings,” said Miss Lacy. “After Mrs. Calderon, of course.”
“It is mean of us to pass it off lightly,” said Terence. “But I don’t see what else to do. I can hardly admit that I valued my life above my mother’s.”
“Proving it does seem to be enough,” said Esmond.
“Suppose something should come of it,” said Jenney, half to herself. “Then we should have to reproach ourselves.”
“But congratulate ourselves, too, I suppose,” said Anna.
“Nothing will come of it” said Jessica, in a quiet voice. “If anything does, or seems to, it will be what would have come anyhow.”
“Why must we continue in this confusion?” murmured Tullia. “Are we never to emerge from it?”
“It is a pity if none of these things is true,” said Terence. “If we cannot protect ourselves by letting other people be the thirteenth, and take the path underneath the ladder, and all of it. It seems to make life not more safe, but less so.”
“You have wasted a good deal of contrivance, I suppose,” said Anna.
“I don’t think it is quite wasted. I think it is just worth while to do it.”
“Uncle Thomas was making sport for himself,” said Bernard.
“And not without some success,” said his uncle.
“Oh, you did not sit down last, any more than anyone else did, Uncle Thomas,” said Anna. “Don’t think that we did not notice it.”
“We can’t make out that the matter was not real to us,” said Esmond.
“Have we not done a little towards it?” said Terence.
“Aunt Jessica dared what strong men flinched at,” said Bernard. “How many of us were strong, flinching men?”
“Four,” said Terence.
“Five,” said Anna. “Father cannot be excepted.”
“I did not mean to except him,” said Terence. “I only felt that I was not a strong man myself, though of course a flinching one.”
“Then your sacrifice would have been less,” said Esmond. “Your chance of life is slighter.”
“But life is especially precious when it hangs by a frail thread. And weakly lives have that way of outlasting others.”
“Well, the courage of womanhood has come up to the test,” said Miss Lacy.
“I was always afraid I was not a womanly person,” said Claribel. “And now I know that my level is that of men.”
“Oh, courage; what is it?” said Tullia.
“It is the great quality of daring to risk oneself,” said Bernard. “Moral courage is supposed to be the best, but that may be because it is impossible to show the other. We must feel that we have some kind.”
“Why is it so great?” said Tullia, almost absently.
“Well, we will hope it is not, as we have not shown it, and someone else has. But I fear that it is.”
“I have to show it in every hour of each day,” said Sukey. “Well, it ought to make me appreciate my sister’s showing it on one occasion. And I think I can say that it does. But I did not feel it was for me to make a further call on mine. I am sometimes afraid it may give out one day. And then where shall I be?”
“Having to show it so much must make you think rather little of an isolated instance of it,” said Anna.
“No, I must not let it have that effect on me,” said Sukey, in a tone so much lighter, that Jessica was startled by her instant response to sympathy. “You will tell me if you think I am letting my own suffering blunt me to that of others. I would not get like that, even for the time I have left. I would not become so unworthy of the self I once was.”
“It seems better to have no earlier self,” said Bernard.
“It seems easier,” said Anna, brusquely.
“If Aunt Sukey had sat down last, she would have lived her last days in a blaze of glory,” said Terence, not meaning his words to reach his aunt’s ears.
’’ I should have said that she did enough of deserving glory, as it is,” said Anna, with the opposite intention for hers.
“No, I should only have been thought to be making a small sacrifice, as I had not much to lose,” said Sukey, with a smile of gratitude for Anna. “It would not be realised that having only a little of something may add to its value, especially when the something is life itself.”
“We might all have sat down last,” said Thomas, looking with a light in his eyes at the faces round him. “We are fourteen at the table.”
His hearers turned from side to side in rapid calculation.
“Oh!” said Claribel, with almost a scream in her voice. “Then there was something in the instinct that prompted me to come to-day! I wondered if I should be de trop, and if my young relatives would be better without me, and my elder ones be sufficient to themselves, and all the other things that occur to the worrying and ultra-sensitive. And here I am, justified of myself, and exonerated and even appreciated by other people! I feel in quite a different frame of mind; I am quite uplifted.”
“I hope the effect is the same upon us all,” said Esmond. “Each one has an equal right to it.”
“You have saved us from dark and dreadful things,” said Terence to Claribel. “Now no one can know that I did not see we were fourteen at the table, and was not mischievously silent about it. Or anyhow no one can prove it.”
“Yes, you owe it to me. I was the only person whose coming was in any doubt. I am the pivot upon which the structure turns.”
“No, no, we cannot say it,” said Thomas, shaking his head, “though the boldness of the claim almost justifies it.”
“We were trembling with love of life and fear of death,” said Bernard.
“We were all in whimsical mood,” said Miss Lacy.
“But many things take cover behind Miss Lacy’s word,” said Thomas.
“I think a good many are going to,” said Benjamin.
“Why did you not sit down first, Father?” said Anna.
“For the reasons that prevented other people from doing so,” said Benjamin, preferring the sacrifice of an honest claim to shyness to facing his daughter’s public disbelief.
“Did you know from the first that we were fourteen, Uncle Thomas?” said Anna.
“No, I had just discovered it. I put you out of your misery at once.”
“What a good thing there was nothing in it, after all!” said Jenney, in a tone of gratitude.
“You again prove your personal heroism,” said Bernard.
“Is there never to be an end of that in people?” said Terence. “I am tired of cringing before their nobility.”
“You must not expect to appear a hero,” said Claribel. “I cannot manage as much as that for you.”
“How do you feel about it, Aunt Jessica?” said Anna. “Have you any sense of relief? Or were you sincere in giving the impression that you thought there was nothing in it?”
“I have a faint feeling of relief,” said Jessica, with simple honesty, “but I am riot proud of myself for having it.”
“So Aunt Jessica is not so far above other people, after all,” said Anna, looking round.
“What an odd deduction!” said Esmond.
“I wish it were the right one,” said Terence. “I do not like cutting such a sorry figure beside my mother.”
“Well, a mother is a person you should be able to look up to, my son,” said Thomas.
“But is a son one that she should be obliged to look down on? Of course I am thinking of her and not of myself.”
“You are fortunate. Most of us are thinking of her and of ourselves as well,” said Benjamin. “A comparison is odious and unavoidable.”