“Uncle Thomas was rash in putting his family to the test,” said Esmond.
“Well, our family did not come out any better,” said Anna.
“No, but he might be less concerned with that.”
“I am glad that Bernard and Esmond both put their own lives first,” said Terence.
“We all did that,” said Anna. “But I suppose women are allowed to do such things.”
“Think of the difference between what Aunt Jessica did, and what it was permitted her to do,” said Bernard.
“I think it was unmanly of Father to expose her to public trial,” said Terence. “Suppose she had not come out so nobly?”
“You see how well I knew her,” said Thomas.
“Will you find it possible to settle down amongst such a bevy of strangers?” said Tullia to Florence, as if the other subject were exhausted for her.
“I shall get used to it. I shall have to. I have no home but Aunt Emma’s.”
“You will show the kind of courage that is the hardest,” said Terence. “We have all missed the chance of showing the other kind, and it would have had so many witnesses. The worst of the first is that it never has any.”
“Did you find your morning with Reuben what you wanted, Terence?” said Benjamin, going as far as he would go, in enquiring after his son’s education.
“Yes, I did, thank you, Uncle.”
“You spent most of it out of doors, didn’t you?” said Anna.
“Yes, that was what I wanted.”
“I hope Reuben passed the time more profitably.”
“I hope so. He should be learning independence.”
“It strikes me that you assume he has learnt it.”
“That is the modern method of training. Trust a boy, and he will be worthy of trust. Whatever attribute you assign to him, turns out to be his. You really assign it.”
“It is a pleasant method for the teacher,” said Anna.
“Yes, but a teacher should enjoy his work. If he does not, he is not a born teacher.”
“Terence’s teaching is his own affair, my daughter,” said Benjamin.
“Oh, it is mine too, Father. I am not going to be deprived of all part and parcel in Reuben, because he is having his lessons in another house. I have not brought him up from babyhood for that.”
“It is Jenney who has performed that office for him,” said Esmond.
“Well, she is to be allowed to take a little interest in him too.”
“I think there is much in what Anna says,” said Sukey. “And I am sure both Terence and Reuben agree.”
“Yes, I like as many apron-strings as I can get, Aunt Sukey,” said Reuben. “I have not had the chance of being the ordinary embarrassed boy. And I daresay it is not much loss for me or other people.”
“We see the result of Terence’s method,” said Bernard. “Reuben has made a great advance.”
“He always talked like a book,” said Anna.
“My cousin, Anna, would pin me to a desk,” said Terence.
“I only assumed that your choosing to be a tutor had mapped out that course for you.”
“Did I really choose to be it? Then what injustice people do me!”
“Teaching by default,” said Miss Lacy, with a musing air; “I have never tried that method.”
“Well, you could hardly stay at home, by way of undertaking two children’s education,” said Anna.
“Could I not? I wonder,” said Miss Lacy, in independent consideration.
“These new ideas of teaching are an eye-opener to me,” said Anna.
“Are you a person who does useful things?” said Tullia to Florence.
“I cannot do much that is any good,” said the latter.
“We can’t all help the world in a workaday way,” said Miss Lacy, acquiescent in owning a relative who did not earn her support. “Some of us must depend on other people. And after all, it shows trust; it shows a belief in other people’s powers; it argues a certain generosity. Oh, we can underestimate the qualities of the dependent. We must not sweep people aside, because they toil not, neither do they spin.”
“It sounds discreditable to belong to the lilies of the field,” said Tullia.
“You are mistaken,” said Esmond.
“It is the right company for some of us,” said Thomas, looking at his daughter.
“I am worried about our rising from the table,” said Terence. “Is it the person who gets up last, who dies in a short time? Suppose Mother’s sacrifice has been in vain, and we are all once more in danger?”
“I ought to have thought of our being thirteen,” said Jessica. “It was foolish to forget the superstition.”
“Was it the action of a homicide or suicide?” said Terence. “I think you have no choice but to make it the latter.”
“Well, I can do so, my son. I will stay in my seat until you have all left yours.”
“One, two, three, go!” said Thomas, rising at the last word and looking round the table.
“Dear me, I wonder we were not all startled into jumping higher than we did,” said Miss Lacy, giving the explanation of such action on her part.
“We are fourteen at the table,” said Tullia, lifting her shoulders and speaking with a sigh.
“I wish I could realise it,” said Terence. “It would save me so much.”
“It is all right, Florence, my dear,” said Jessica, smiling. “We are really fourteen.”
“It is all this wretched uncertainty,” said her son.
“Can’t we any of us count?” said Anna.
“I am glad that Aunt Jessica and Aunt Sukey are not both facing death,” said Bernard. “It would be an overwhelming state of affairs in a family.”
“Death has a way of running in families,” said Thomas.
“If we were immortal, we should begin to complain of that,” said Miss Lacy.
“No, I think that is an error, though a usual one,” said Benjamin.
“It is odd that it should be so common,” said Thomas, “when we conceive the highest beings of our imagination, such as gods and angels, as immortal.”
“We say it to comfort ourselves,” said Terence. “We condemn everlasting life, to enable us to face a limited one. We must have something to help us to bear it.”
Jessica rose to end the talk, not so much because it was uttered too low for her ears, as because when this was so, she mistrusted its nature.
“I must go upstairs and give an eye to the children.”
“I will go too,” said Terence. “I shall be in constant attendance on my mother, in atonement for rating my life above hers.”
“In public too,” said Anna.
“Well, my atonement will also be public. And of course everyone would do it in private. Acts of preferring other people’s lives to your own are always done publicly. People don’t yield belts and boats to women behind the scenes. Drowned heroes have been seen for the last time in the act of relinquishing them. Seen doing it; that is the point. And captains stand in a prominent part of their ships, to go down with them, and sometimes in full uniform. But my public behaviour was on a level with my private, and that is too low a standard. People could only sympathise with it in their hearts, and that means openly condemning it.”
“What is that noise?” said Jessica, as they approached the schoolroom.
“The sound of family strife,” said Terence.
His mother hastily opened the door.
“You are not fighting, are you?” she said, with a hopefulness in the face of circumstances, that was hardly characteristic.
The combatants fell apart, startled by discovery, but mastered by their passions. Their eyes, uncertain on their mother and smouldering on each other, ranged to and fro.
“What is it all about?” said Jessica.