“Oh, I don’t think that I was in her thoughts. I was just the instrument to save you from poverty, or whatever she feared for you.”
“It is my father’s duty to care for me. But he is like an animal, and takes no thought for me, now I am mature.”
“Well, no one but me heard your mother. These things arise from having people about, who are not held to count. No doubt she felt it and took advantage of it. But I find myself speculating how those who incurred her other words would take them; Florence and your father and all of them.”
“Why, what did she say about Florence? I do not mind her words about Father. He deserves them.”
“Oh, just the obvious things about her not being suitable for you, for material and other reasons.”
“That was not the tone of my mother’s speech,” said Terence.
“Oh, no, no, it is mine,” said Anna. “I am not quoting your mother. I should not dream of it. And I seldom make an attempt to give people’s tone. It results in a much more erroneous impression, than just giving a natural account.”
“I thought she and Florence had a liking for each other.”
“They could hardly help it, could they, as everyone had one for them both? You should have seen Esmond’s gaze on Florence the other day. My heart quite misgave me for my brother. I don’t know what his luck may be.”
“Are you attached to Florence yourself?”
“Well, yes, I suppose so. She is a pretty thing to follow with one’s eyes. I don’t know that I have got much further. And I have seen no sign that she wishes me to make any advance.”
“Are you very fond of anyone?”
“Oh, well, yes, of two or three people, the inevitable two or three of a person who does not disperse her affections. I am not one for scattering mine; perhaps I have not enough to spare. My father, Aunt Sukey, Bernard, Reuben. In a secondary way, Jenney. Those are the objects of my attachment, or its victims.”
“You are more my mother’s niece than you know,” said Terence.
“Yes, I know what you mean,” said Anna, meeting his eyes for a moment. “I often felt a current of fellow-feeling running between us. I felt it even at that last meeting, when it was the last thing to be thought. That is how my accounts of it came to seem discrepant. I was the victim of a sort of dual feeling. I did not know how to cope with the channel of sympathy, that would flow out of me towards her, when my reason told me that I ought to be angry and insulted. And indeed I was both.”
“It is a pity that you did not know each other better.”
“Well, I never expect much precipitance in people’s approach to me. There is not much about my outer self to help them forward.”
“Aunt Sukey seems to have managed better,” said Terence.
“There are always some of us who pierce the shells of certain others. I suppose it was an instance of that. I am fortunate that it was so, and do not feel entitled to expect another case of it.”
“It is unfortuante that my mother’s nerves were worked off on you.”
“Oh, I understand it more and more. I may have been dense about it at the time. But she missed the essence of me, and that never helps a person to grasp the inner truth of another. And I may not be alive to the complexities of the subtle type, being built on plain and obvious lines myself.”
“You certainly do not seem to have done each other justice.”
“And that was harder on her than on me,” said Anna, at once. “Because I am used to being missed, and taken for a rougher, cruder creature than I am. And she was more fortunate in her outer aspect and suggestions.”
There was a pause.
“I suppose we should go to the others,” said Terence. “I must not forget you are a guest.”
“I suppose I may be a cousin,” said Anna, following him with the hurrying step, that took her so little faster than other people’s. “I have done nothing to forfeit that bond, as far as I can see. But you are more versed in the etiquette of a house of mourning than I am.”
“You have not seen Tullia, have you?”
“I caught a glimpse of her, and was just vouchsafed a glance.”
“I expect she was not thinking of what she was doing.”
“I am sure she was not,” said Anna, cordially. “How should she be at this time? And why should I expect to arrest her attention at any time?”
“You did not come in here to find her?”
“No, I thought the children were here. I fancied I heard their voices. They must have come from somewhere else.”
“I don’t think they are heard at all at this juncture,” said Terence.
They went to the drawing-room to find their fathers talking by the fire, and the children sitting silent. Tullia was standing upright and aloof, as a person called to a different and tragic place, and Bernard was standing near, with a suggestion of attendance.
“Well, we are quite a party,” said Anna.
“That is hardly the accepted aspect of the gathering,” said Esmond.
“Now why call attention to someone’s little false step?” said Anna, in a rather low but exasperated tone. “You should try to gloss it over, instead of making it as conspicuous as possible. The most elementary social sense should show you that. What do you gain by making someone else feel uncomfortable?”
“Esmond can hardly reply that he gains a mean, personal gratification,” said Bernard.
Terence looked at Anna in sympathy, interpreting her outbreak in the light of his changing conception of her.
“Oh, well, I daresay these things slip out,” she said, subsiding into a seat.
“It sometimes seems that people are not fair on Anna,” said Terence to Bernard.
“She has that odd attribute, carelessness of the impression she makes.”
“It would be a great thing to be free of the effort of making a good one. But what would happen to most of us without it?”
“Worse than to Anna,” said Bernard, believing what he said. “But as you see, bad things happen to her.”
“I believe my ears ought to be tingling,” said Anna, glancing at the pair.
“It is good of you all to come and start us on our new life,” said Thomas. “It prevents the gaps from yawning too wide before our eyes. To have them filled on the surface is something.”
“I suppose the new life will not really seem to begin until after the funeral,” said Anna.
“Anna may be an enemy to herself,” said Esmond, “but other people do not escape.”
“You seem to speak from personal knowledge,” said Terence to Anna.
“Well, my life had in effect to start again after Aunt Sukey’s death. Yes, I know what I am talking about. I wish I did not.”
“It is a pity that we have to know so much,” said Terence. “I often feel that I cannot sustain the weight of my knowledge. And with every day it gets worse.”
“I feel rather an empty, ignorant person on the whole. Apart from one’s own individual depths, of course. I suppose everyone has those.”
“I wish I did not know that they had. I am really not equal to it. I wish I could know so much, that I knew that I knew nothing.”
“Your young brother and sister must find you a perplexing elder,” said Anna.
“I never talk to them,” said Terence. “I have only just realised that. I wonder what they would think, if I did?”
“You can easily try,” said Anna.
“I should have to break through that intense family shyness. And of course I should find that especially hard. But I must not let it conquer me. Julius, may I suggest that we hold some intercourse?”
“What?” said Julius.
“Because Mother is dead?” said Dora.
“There, you see what sort of reason strikes them as adequate. They may even think that I am trying to take their mother’s place.”
“Well, it wouldn’t be a bad attempt to make,” said Anna, resting her eyes on the children, as if in compassion.