She guided her niece up the stairs and was entering her sister’s room, when Anna drew back and put both her hands before her face.
“Oh, no, no, I can’t, please; I can’t quite manage this. I am not such a tough person as you seem to think. You are a deal in advance of me, if this is your standard. I can’t quite meet you on this ground.”
Jessica drew her into the room, as if she had not heard. It was necessary to do as she did, and words were wasted. Her face had something aloof and almost empty about it, as if she were not so much indifferent to daily things, as apart from them.
“You quite bring my heart into my mouth,” said Anna, forcing an easier tone. “To make such a parade of a thing like this is ghoulish, and has something ominous about it. I don’t know what your purpose is, but does it really need this kind of foundation?”
“I want you to tell me just what happened in that last hour,” said Jessica.
“I have told you. I have given an account of it more than once. And I am all against going over the same ground again and again. It leads to unconscious fabrication. I have given you the truth and you must be content. Asking for elaboration of it is really asking for the other thing.”
“Have I had the truth?” said Jessica, in a tone that was as impersonal as if she were thinking aloud.
Anna threw up her brows and made a hopeless gesture.
“What you have told me, is not the truth to me.”
“I daresay it is not,” said Anna, with a touch of sympathy. “Not the truth as you would like to have it. But I warned you that I could not adapt it. It would never do to begin.”
“I knew my sister to the bottom of her heart. Our minds were open to each other. And she did not destroy her old will, if she was herself; and to my mind she was. Tell me what happened, Anna?”
“I do not know. How can I? It had happened before I saw her. Only the reaction remained, and I will not be led into basing imaginary scenes on that. I am going to be firm there. You show me the danger.”
“What did she say about it all? What were her exact words? I must know for my own ease of mind. I do not want anything to come of it.”
“Good heavens, what strange, suggestive speeches!” said Anna, raising her eyes full to her aunt’s. “I shall hardly know what to think. And naturally I will not respond to your questioning, if it is to lead to this. I should have thought that Aunt Sukey’s death was enough in itself, without our trying to get more out of it. I don’t feel I can dramatise the situation, Aunt Jessica. Aunt Sukey did not say that you had been the one figure in her life, or that her main feeling was gratitude to you, or anything of that kind. If that is what you want to hear, I cannot help you. You know that she was vexed and upset on that day, indeed was bitter against all of you. If I told you she was not, you would know it was a falsehood. You must not lay this stress on the truth, and then expect me to stretch it. And I am without the power of doing so; it is simply left out of me. I told you that, if you asked for the truth, you would get it. I gave you fair warning.”
“She would not have done that to me and mine,” said Jessica, looking past her niece. “It was not in her. That is how she came to make the pretence of doing it. If it had been her purpose, she would not have spoken of it.”
“Oh, I don’t understand your tortuous minds! You mean something and say nothing, or you mean one thing and say another. That is why you expect me to do it. And expect Aunt Sukey to do it too; expect that she did it, I mean, which seems to be worse. And I don’t think it was in her, to use your own phrase. And anyhow it is not in me, and you had better realise it, or we shall go on for ever. If you mean a thing, you would not speak of it! What a key to the difference between us!”
“Shall I ever know what she felt and what she suffered?”
“Well, I have done my best for you, and can do no more. I told you she felt you had failed her, or rather that your family had. Not that she ever said a word against you, yourself, Aunt Jessica. And if she meant the opposite of what” she said, you ought to take comfort.”
“You are harsh to me,” said Jessica, turning her eyes on her niece with sudden sight in them.
“And what are you to me? A pattern of flattering kindness?”
“I want the truth,” said Jessica, almost with a moan in her voice. “I feel I must have it.”
“Well you have it. You can take heart,” said Anna, with a touch of rough kindliness. “And surely things are not so bad, that they might not be worse. In a family of this kind, and with Aunt Sukey as she was, I wonder they were not worse. You have nothing on your mind, that would not be the lot of nine people out of ten. And why should anyone expect to be the tenth?”
Jessica shook her head, in rejection of the words or the essence of them, and stood as though her eyes were on something that Anna did not see.
“Well can we adjourn the meeting?” said Anna. “Or rather dissolve it, as I cannot live under the threat of its being called again.”
“Did she tell you she had burned a will?” said Jessica. “One of your brothers said something about it, but you did not mention it to me.”
“She said she had burned some papers,” said Anna, in a faintly impatient but natural tone. “And I think it was to you that I spoke of it first. It would naturally have been. I did not know what they were. How could I, as she did not say? It seemed to be a weight off her mind, as I have said. I am not going to keep saying it again. That is how distortion begins.”
“You did not see the two wills together?”
“I did not see any will, or know that there was one. How could I, as I was not told? Aunt Sukey did not take me into her confidence. I suppose I had not got as far as that with her. I wish I could feel that I had; I should like to think I knew the whole of her mind. And I might have given her better companionship in that last hour. I see she steered her way alone. But I suppose she always did, as I suppose we all do really. I daresay it isn’t anything to have on one’s mind.”
“She must have had the two wills in her hands at the same moment.”
“I should have thought it would be more natural to keep them apart, especially as she is so methodical and definite. Was, I should say; I shall never get into the way of speaking of her in the past.”
“There is no need to think of her like that,” said Jessica, in an automatic tone, her eyes looking beyond her niece.
“Well, have I done all I can? Is the matter at an end? I think I must feel that it is, before we leave it. I can’t feel that I am liable to be called up here, and worked upon at any moment. I should not dare to come to the house. It is almost too much for me, this having things probed and raked in the room where Aunt Sukey lived and died. And are not these matters personal to herself? Must we pry into them? It seems like taking advantage of her death. Or it does for me, as I was excluded from them. She had a right to keep things to herself as far as she wished; and there I would choose to leave it.”
“She must have put the wrong will back into the desk,” said Jessica, as if she had not heard the words, or had passed them over.
“Then she kept the wrong one in her hands, and put the same wrong one on the fire. Well, it was not like Aunt Sukey. That is all that can be said.”
“She might not have acted according to herself. She would hardly have been herself an hour before her death. The forces of her system would have been running down.”
“Oh, don’t,” said Anna, putting up her hands, as if to ward off a blow. “You are a strong, unshrinking person, and no mistake. I feel a kind of admiration for you. But I am not equal to it. It is beyond my limit, this probing into what we dare not think of. What I dare not think of, I suppose I should say; I must not ascribe the same weakness to you. Who would have thought that you would be the tough subject, and I the squeamish one? I should have been the last person to classify us like that.”