Cook supported the silence.
“But it will have to be known,” said Jenney. “And someone must have told you.”
“We are never spared bad news,” said Ethel.
“We cannot say the same,” said Bernard, “and so must ask your help.”
“If it is that,” said Ethel.
“A strange word,” murmured Cook.
“There may have been every excuse,” said Ethel. “I am the last to deny it.”
“We might all fall,” said Cook.
“We will make all the excuses we can, when we are in a position to do so,” said Bernard. “You are preventing them from being made. That hardly seems a proper thing.”
“Miss Donne was never driven to it,” said Ethel. “Not with all she faced.”
“So that was it!” said Jenney.
There was a pause.
“How did she do it?” said Bernard.
“She took her own way,” said Ethel.
“But she must have followed some method.”
“It is not often that a sister’s need is made the instrument of such a thing.”
“Miss Donne’s medicines!” said Jenney. “Were they still in the room?”
“But they were harmless,” said Bernard.
“You can attain the amount,” said Ethel.
“There was something for preventing pain,” said Jenney. “I don’t think Miss Donne ever needed it. They knew too much of that would be dangerous.”
“To think that with escape at hand, she never availed herself of it!” said Ethel, whose mind was becoming inured to the step.
“Never fell from her height,” said Cook. “And with that lovely face!”
“Was it all over when Mrs. Calderon was found?” said Bernard.
“Beyond recall,” said Ethel. “If she would have thought better of it, it was too late.”
“Is the truth officially known?”
Ethel looked at Bernard.
“Has any definite message come?” said Jenney.
“Things travel in their own way,” said Cook.
“We see that they do,” said Bernard, “but has this come in any accepted way?”
“We had no choice but to accept it,” said Ethel.
Benjamin entered the room with a letter in his hand, followed by Esmond, looking as usual, and by Anna, pale and shaken. Claribel followed with her head thrown backwards, as if in resigned acceptance of the truth. None of them noticed Cook and Ethel, or had the opportunity to do so, as they made an imperceptible retreat.
“That is sad news, Mr. Donne,” said Jenney, in a conventional and therefore unnatural manner.
“How did you know it?” said Esmond. “Of course it is the kind of thing that must be known,”
“I suppose it must be true,” said Benjamin. “The letter is from my brother-in-law. There can be no doubt.”
“It is an appalling position for me,” said Anna. “Aunt Jessica to do this, just as I had been quarrelling with her! Or so it will be said. Of course she was really making an attack on me, but sight will be lost of that.”
“There are other aspects of the situation,” said Esmond.
“And other times for sneering,” said his sister.
“I wonder if we shall ever know what her real reasons were,” said Jenney.
“As she is not alive to tell the tale, I don’t see how we can,” said Anna. “It seems that she was moody and absent for some hours, and then crept away by herself and did this. Aunt Sukey’s room too! There seems to be no end to the pollution of it. No wonder she said such strange things. She must have been in an abnormal state.”
“Forget that last hour with her,” said Benjamin, “and remember those that went before.”
“No, that is the one that must stand out in my memory, Father. I suppose it was the culmination of all that was going wrong, I did not have much luck in being the victim of it.”
“Aunt Jessica seems to have had less,” said Esmond.
“Her life was too heavy on her,” said Benjamin. “It seems that we ought to have known.”
“Now why was it?” said Anna. “She had a good husband and a good home and good children, and money enough for her needs. How many people have to manage with less!”
“It often seems that they manage better,” said Claribel. “I wonder it is not accepted.”
“Happiness does not depend on what we have,” said Benjamin.
“She seems to think it does,” said Anna. “Seemed to think it did, I mean. How muddled one gets, with one’s relations following each other off the earth at such a pace! It seemed that all her peace depended on what she was to possess. It was a strange and tragic thing.”
“It was, when the peace was not thought to be worth the price,” said Esmond.
“Oh, we all know that yours was disturbed, and the reason of it.”
“Aunt Jessica had other things in her life,” said Bernard. “We may give the will too large a place.”
“No, no,” said Anna, sighing, “there is not that loophole. There was nothing else in her mind. Nothing else existed for her. You were not present.”
“We shall begin to think we were,” said Claribel.
“I shall not,” said Esmond.
“I am sure I welcome any sense of fellowship as regards the scene,” said Anna. “I have no feeling of proprietorship in it.”
“That sense is satisfied in other ways,” said Esmond.
“And how yours would be satisfied in the same way!” said his sister, resting her eyes on him. “How one sees that now!”
“There will have to be another funeral,” said Jenney. “Well, everything is ready, isn’t it?”
“The routine is established,” said Esmond. “Anna and Claribel remain at home, and the rest of us are present in person.”
“I feel rather one by myself,” said Bernard. “I am sorrowing for Aunt Jessica.”
“And not alone, my son,” said Benjamin.
“I am not,” said Anna, shaking her head. “No, not now. I could have been, but the capacity was crushed in me. For Aunt Sukey, yes; I sorrowed for her, if you will. I see the difference too well, to be in any doubt.”
“I think I am sorrowing more for Aunt Jessica,” said Bernard.
“She seemed to me the better of the two,” said Esmond. “I never understood why Aunt Sukey was Anna’s choice.”
“Perhaps because I was hers,” said his sister. “That does give the best foundation.”
“Aunt Jessica looked on us all with affection, a rare thing in a woman with a family,” said Bernard. “And now that has gone out of our lives.”
“It is indeed a loss in them,” said Benjamin.
“It was never in mine,” said Anna. “And you must remember that Bernard is a man, Father. It was a thing Aunt Jessica never forgot.”
“It meant nothing to her,” said Esmond.
“Well, what a thing to happen in the family!” said Jenney.
“I was wondering who would say it,” said Bernard. “I would not be the first, for fear I had thought it too soon.”
“Oh, I can keep my tongue still about that,” said Anna. “I do not cast that up against Aunt Jessica’s memory.”
“We resent nothing that is helpless,” said Benjamin.
“Well, that is putting it better, Father.”
“We take the matter rather lightly,” said Esmond.
“I was wondering why,” said his brother.
“I can tell you,” said Anna. “Aunt Jessica cast a cloud over people, and it is something to be free from it. I think even Father will understand.”
“I wish I had been of more help to her,” said Benjamin.
The door opened and Reuben came into the room with a jumping step.
“So Aunt Jessica is dead now,” he said, speaking just before he paused.
“Yes, she died this morning,” said Jenney, in a repressive manner. “She has gone to be with your Aunt Sukey.”