“It might certainly meet a different fate in the hands of Aunt Jessica,” said Esmond. “Perhaps Aunt Sukey left it to you, to save it from being dispersed. People like to feel that their hoard will survive them, as a monument of themselves. They do not want their last traces to be obliterated.”
“Well, why should they?” said Anna. “And how like you to use the word, ‘hoard’! I can understand their point of view. It is said that money is left to people who do not need it, and there may be something underlying it. I do not say there is not. ‘Money to money’ is a phrase, isn’t it? That rather bears out the view, and may throw light on Aunt Sukey’s decision.”
“Your Aunt Jessica was speaking of the funeral,” said Benjamin, his voice recalling that there was another side to the matter. “It is to be on Friday. No doubt some of us should go.”
“I suppose all of us,” said his daughter. “There does not seem to be any reason for avoiding it, though I should rather like to find one. I do not look forward to the ceremony. It seems to set the final and irrevocable seal on everything.”
“Are the rest of us supposed to anticipate it?” said Claribel, glancing at Anna’s brothers.
“Do we not realise that this particular lane has no turning?” said Esmond.
“Oh, nothing is the same to any two people,” said Anna.
“Aunt Jessica is not going,” said Reuben. “She is going to stay at home with Julius and Dora.”
“Then I think that releases me,” said Anna, looking round. “I do not see why I should face what she will not. I will remain behind with Reuben. I don’t much care for the experience for him. And I never think a funeral is in a woman’s line.”
“My first will certainly be my own,” said Claribel, “and I would stay away from that, if I could.”
“Well, that is a natural point of view,” said Bernard.
“I think it would be better for me to go,” said Reuben. “I have never seen a funeral, and if Bernard and Esmond are going, it would attract attention if the third brother stayed away.”
Anna looked from him to the others with grim humour.
“Well, my sons and I will go,” said Benjamin, his voice betraying his view of his command of this escort.
“And Jenney will go, won’t she?” said Reuben, feeling he had made a rash undertaking.
“Yes, I will go with you,” said Jenney, in a tone of giving a promise.
“And your daughter will be here to welcome you back, Father,” said Anna. “You will be glad of someone who has kept aloof, by the time you reach the climax.”
“I suppose Tullia is going,” said Bernard. “I did not hear that she was not.”
“Oh, Tullia can cast things off,” said Anna. “And she may prefer a funeral to an hour with Aunt Jessica.”
“She does not feel to her mother in that way,” said Benjamin. “You must know that she does not.”
“Oh, well, I may read into her mind what would be in my own. It is inevitable that I should do so. Aunt Jessica has made an end of things between her family and me. But I should have thought her way of making people feel at a disadvantage would hardly be in Tullia’s line.”
“It would not be in mine,” said Bernard, “but I cannot say I have felt it.”
“No,” said Anna, looking at him in unprejudiced consideration, “I don’t suppose you have. I should say it would be like that; a man would escape. Now Terence would rather be with his mother than face the funeral.”
“Is Aunt Jessica not a nice person?” said Reuben.
“She has different sides, like most of us,” said his sister.
“You do not seem to like her.”
“Well, I hardly could, considering the aspect she has shown to me. But there is no reason why you should not, if she shows you a different one. And she has been very kind to you, hasn’t she?”
“Do you think it is so very wrong to think she ought to have Aunt Sukey’s money?”
“No, I think it is quite natural. I should have thought she ought myself, if Aunt Sukey had died without a will. But there are different methods of trying to put right what you feel is wrong, and she did not choose a good or kind one. You have heard so much, that you must hear just a little more. And we should always accept wills without any question, because they are a kind of message from someone who is dead. We all want Aunt Sukey’s wishes to be carried out, don’t we?”
“Doesn’t Aunt Jessica want them to be?”
“Oh, I don’t know, I am sure,” said Anna, turning away and speaking in a voice with a sigh in it.
Chapter XI
“CAN I SPEAK to you, Miss Jennings?” Said Ethel.
“Yes, if you have anything to say, and have really thought about it,” said Jenney, implying that she must withhold her ear from rash decisions.
“I hardly know how to break it to you, Miss Jennings.”
“You make me feel quite nervous,” said Jenney, pleasantly and with truth, giving a shake to her needlework.
“It is the worst,” said Ethel, in a warning manner.
Jenney felt that Ethel’s estimate of her own value was more true than becoming, perhaps could hardly be both.
“There has not been an accident?” she said, as if this was the natural interpretation of the words.
“No one in this house, Miss Jennings.”
“What is the trouble?” said Bernard from the sofa.
“It is Mrs. Calderon,” said Ethel.
“Who has had an accident?”
“It may have been that, sir.”
“Oh, what has happened?” said Jenney.
“The worst, Miss Jennings. I can say no more.”
“Do you mean that she is dead?”
“You had the preparation,” said Ethel, with a note of reproach.
“Oh!” said Jenney, folding her work in a form suitable for resumption, as she would not have done, if the trouble had been in the house. “Oh, what has happened? Anything is better than suspense.”
“I hardly liked to say that,” said Bernard. “I always wonder that people admit it.”
“She was found,” said Ethel, in a deeper tone, urged to the point, as Bernard had intended, by the threat of digression from it.
“By whom?” said Jenney. “What had happened?”
“Poor Miss Tullia!” said Ethel.
“Do you mean that she found her?”
“It seems to be fated, when it was she who came on Miss Donne.”
There was a silence.
“It may be her father next, if these things go in threes,” said Ethel. “It was doing something for him, that took her to the room. They were making it into his study.”
There was a pause.
“You would think they would relinquish that project now,” said Ethel.
“And how did she find Mrs. Calderon?” said Bernard.
“It confronted her, sir, as she crossed the threshold.”
“Was she lying on the ground?”
“It was the selfsame chair, sir, where Miss Donne breathed her last.”
There was another silence.
“You would hardly think they would use that chair now,” said Ethel. “Or use the room at all. You would think they would shut it away from approach.”
“Have they any idea of the cause of death?” said Bernard.
“Suppose one of the children had gone in,” said Ethel. “Poor little Miss Dora!”
“It might have meant being transfixed,” said Cook. “Come in, Cook,” said Bernard.
Cook came forward with a movement that would hardly have been detectable, if it had not resulted in an advance.
“These are times,” she said, in the tones that gave people a sense of surprise that they had heard them. “Death upon death.”
“And there may be the third,” said Ethel.
“But what was the cause of this?” said Bernard. “Is it known or not?”
“We do not speak evil of the dead,” said Ethel. “Not a word will pass my lips.”