“What difference will the money make to us?” said Reuben.
“Well, we shall be able to do some things that have not hitherto been possible,” said Anna. “And any sort of education for you, or opportunity for the others, may be considered. That is about what it will be. And we shall be able to run the house with ease and hospitality. That will be about the length of the rope, I should think.”
“You are wise, my daughter,” said Benjamin. “Any change in the scale of life would take your money, and leave you as you were before. You are right to get your advantage out of it. And it will be free to be diverted to your own purposes, in the event of a change in your own life.”
“You make the future sound an uncertain quantity. I was thinking that things would go on for ever, only easier and smoother for ourselves and other people.”
“Changes must come,” said Benjamin. “Death is not the only one.”
“It is the one we have had,” said Anna. “Mother’s death and Aunt Sukey’s seem to be the events of my life. I never thought that any money would come my way.”
“To make a third event,” said Esmond.
“Oh, yes, yes, indeed. I make no secret of feeling it. But I have not had time to savour it yet. As I say, the very idea was strange.”
“Perhaps that is why Aunt Sukey left the money to you,” said Reuben. “She might not have liked people to think about it. It would have seemed like wanting her to die.”
“There may be something in that,” said Anna. “Indeed I don’t suppose there is quite nothing. Out of the mouth of babes!”
“Will you be able to go to Uncle Thomas’s house, as you did before? Or won’t he want to see you?”
“I suppose I shall; I had not thought about it. He won’t like to show any feeling. If he does, I must just stay away; it won’t break my heart. There is no one there whom I especially want to see, now that Aunt Sukey is gone.”
“You must get to know your Aunt Jessica,” said Benjamin. “That would be a great thing in your life.”
“I don’t somehow think there is anything much to come to me there, Father. I don’t disupte that she may have a great deal to give to many people; perhaps to most; but not to me.”
“It is a mistake to be too sure of it.”
“It is a pity to have to be.”
“Well Terence go on teaching me?” said Reuben.
“Yes, if he will,” said Anna. “We can’t make a better arrangement. And there is no need to spend money for the sake of spending.”
“Well, all the trouble is over,” said Jenney. “It wasn’t pleasant for you, was it? People ought to be allowed to enjoy what comes to them. It spoils it, when there is all this question about it. No one could make a will, that would please everybody.”
“I don’t suppose anyone is ever gratified but the legatee and family,” said Claribel.
“And in this case even that did not come quite true,” said Anna, sighing. “Everyone seemed to be trying to get in some little poisoned shaft. I was quite tired of being the target for them. And my opinion of my family and friends did not go up, and that is not a heartening thing. But it is all wearing off now, the main shock and the minor shocks and everything, if minor is the right word for things in that sphere. I think that Father and Bernard came through the ordeal; and I began to see that someone else’s inheriting money constitutes an ordeal indeed. I had not realised it before; I don’t think I should have found it so, myself.” She ended on a quiet note.
“Doesn’t Jenney come through it?” said Reuben.
“Oh, Jenney goes without saying,” said Anna, bringing a look of reward to Jenney’s face.
“You must remember that it makes other people poorer by comparison,” said Bernard, “when they have done nothing to deserve it. And it makes them imagine how things would have been, if the money had been theirs. And then the legatee never seems any richer than before, and that makes them feel that they are poor indeed.”
“Oh, those are the reasons,” said Anna. “Not very real ones, are they?”
“Aunt Jessica had a better one,” said Esmond. “She believed that Aunt Sukey wished her to have the money.”
“Are we to start it all again?” said his sister. “Well it should present no difficulty. I know it all by heart.”
“I think the ground has been covered,” said Benjamin.
“Would Esmond rather that Aunt Jessica had the money, than Anna?” said Reuben.
“He would rather that anyone else had it,” said Benjamin, in a tone whose expression was undefined.
“Anna rendered Aunt Sukey real service,” said Bernard, quickly; “and it is good when virtue does not have to be its own reward. It is too like having no reward at all.”
“You are really quite a tolerable brother,” said Anna.
“I am trying to be different. And I have a sincere respect for you for being so well-off.”
“Money is power,” said Reuben.
“I cannot bear it then,” said Bernard. “But Anna’s money is in the stage when it means comfort and ease and kindness, just the one in which I should choose it.”
“Well, I will try to make it mean those things,” said his sister, keeping her eyes from his face.
Chapter X
“WELL, I APPROACH my relatives’ house in some trepidation,” said Anna, as she hastened in this direction. “It is an odd experience to be received as a guest, by a family you are held to have robbed. I hope it will overcome that of facing the house without Aunt Sukey. There is no more potent force than embarrassment pure and simple. I am not proud of being subdued by it, but it may have its use on this occasion. And it is no good to have a higher standard for yourself than you can manage.”
“I believe you maintain a generally higher one than you used,” said Esmond.
“Well, that is better than letting oneself go headlong downhill. And people tend to go one way or another.”
“The feeling of having riches disposes us to be worthy of them,” said Bernard. “It is the instinct to do something in return, so as to check any tendency of fate to redress the balance.”
“I am glad to be told so much about myself.”
“The instinct to be worthy of good may be a sound one,” said Benjamin. “We should contribute as well as take.”
“Yes it is as well to play fair,” said his daughter. “But I hardly think that is the light in which I am about to be seen.”
Jessica came to meet them, and greeted them in turn without distinction.
“We are more glad to see you than we have ever been. As we get to be fewer, each fills a larger place. We are trying not to be a sadder family, but we must feel a smaller one.”
“An odd effort under the circumstances,” muttered Anna to her brothers. “It would be strange if it were crowned by success.”
“Aunt Sukey will always be in this hall, for the people who saw her here,” said Bernard.
“Not for me,” said his sister, shaking her head. “I don’t get off so easily. Only the reality does for me. I am sorry to be such a material person, but so it is. It seems to me that the essence of the household is gone.”
“I want you to come and talk to me about her,” said Jessica, laying her hand on her niece’s shoulder. “Her last hour was spent with you, and I want to know how she lived it. Those minutes are always in my mind.”
“I will do what I can,” said Anna, turning to follow. “But it seems to me that I have done it several times. I can’t make the hour different from what it was, you know. I am not good at tinkering with the truth. If it tumbles out, whole and plain, I cannot be taken to account.”
“The truth is what I want,” said Jessica. “It is what I feel I must have.”