Elders and Betters (26 page)

“I see few people but my own family. Do I affect them in this way?”

“Well, I have noticed a reluctance in them to be alone with you. Of course I don't know how far they are aware of it. Terence is not a woman or a child, and gives less stimulus to the strange instincts. Oh, I know it is all unconscious, Aunt Jessica; I give you your due; though I can't imagine your doing the same by me, if I were subject to your odd temptations.”

“What about the children?” said Jessica.

“They are too young to give a name to your influence. They just feel it, and avoid it when they can. I have noticed their instinct to elude you, and your sad, questioning eyes. They would make any child feel uneasy and guilty and oppressed. It is a shame to cloud their helpless childhood, and drag all the sweetness out of it; and a childhood too, that has no great happiness or advantage to balance the scale. Reuben may not have much of a life, but it is better than theirs. I know he has no mother, but there may not be only a dark side to that.”

“Would they be happier without me?”

“Of course they would, in so far as you exercise this influence on them. It hardly seems to be quite human. I daresay it has its origin in the past, and you cannot separate yourself from it, any more than we can from any other primitive survival in us. It is said that savages have strange powers, that survive in certain people; and I suppose this is a case of it. They are the more dangerous for being so deep-rooted.”

Jessica loked at Anna almost in wonderment, seeming to return from the world of her own thoughts.

“You said you were simple and unsophisticated,” she said.

“Oh, there it is again, your instinct to wound and pierce and condemn. The most I have said, is that I am plain and downright. People do not say those things about themselves; they hardly like to think them. I may have said that I was regarded in that way. I can't help that, can I? I daresay any sister with three brothers hears such things. And I am more innocent than you are. I have never done harm to the helpless, and your life is spent in that miserable course.”

“A cloud would be lifted from the household, if I were gone,” said Jessica, using a tone between statement and question. “Does my husband feel that I cast this baleful influence?”

“How should I know?” said Anna, with a touch of embarrassment, as her mood filtered. “I have not constituted myself general observer and overseer of your household. And what a word; baleful! It shows that you know the exact essence of your spell. Why don't you stop working it, Aunt Jessica, and try to be a natural, wholesome woman?”

Jessica stood with her eyes on her niece.

“You are my brother's child. You and I are closely bound by blood. Perhaps these things are in us.”

“Oh, they are not in me,” said Anna throwing up her head. “You cannot turn the tables in that way. I do not
possess your qualities, because I see them in you. They are laid bare before my eyes. I cannot help seeing them any more than your family can help it. They may not put the truth into words. It may be wiser not to do so. They may not even see it clearly enough for that. But they suffer from it—don't make any mistake—this sinister, creeping force that poisons their lives.”

“They have not inherited these things?” said Jessica, again in the tone that was partly a question. “I have not done that to them.”

“No, they are like open, crystal streams, compared with you. That is why your muddy eddy fails to mingle with them, and there is this odd divergence between you. But I daresay you do them less harm for that. And I see you have many fine qualities, Aunt Jessica, and of a kind to strike people more readily than those I have seen. It is not my fault that you have exposed them to me; they are generally much more veiled. But you gave me such an exhibition of them, that I saw you for the moment as a monument of all that was dark and evil. And when it came to attributing them to Aunt Sukey—well, it was too much, and took the leash off my tongue. If I am to see you differently, you must give me the chance. I am quite willing to take it.”

“Have you always felt these things in me?”

“Faintly from the first. But I did not put names to them. I just felt as if some hostile emanation from you discharged itself over any innocence or happiness about you. I was first conscious of it in the form of a pity for those who lived with you and under you. But they may feel it less than I imagine. Things are more insistent, when you come from outside, and have not spent your life involved in them. And this last glimpse may have added itself to my earlier impression. It would be difficult to prevent it. Well, to think that you and Father and Aunt Sukey make up a family!”

Jessica rested her eyes on her niece.

“Now you need not look at me, as if we were bound
together by some deep and hidden bond. There is no truth there, and you know it. If there were, there would be some sympathy between us, which it is needless to say there is not. Your feeling to me has been unnatural and hostile from the first. Only Aunt Sukey seemed to see me as her brother's child. And now you want to transfer to me the worst things in yourself. Well, I do not accept them, and that is my last word.”

“We will leave the matter of the wills,” said Jessica, as if her thoughts had been elsewhere. “I do not wish to speak of it again. The money is yours, and no one will question it. But I ask you to help me to understand the harm I am doing my family. I ask it as a favour, Anna. Because I must cease to do it. I must free them by any means in my power. I must make any sacrifice, even that of sin. I will not flinch from anything that gives them freedom.”

“When you talk like that, you take all the wind out of my sails,” said Anna, looking aside. “What a sudden and utter change! It is like seeing someone alter her form before one's eyes. It recalls those scenes in books, that we believed and disbelieved in childhood. Have you been a creature in disguise, or is this the disguise? How am I to know? How did I know what was clear to me before? How do we recognise anything? And yet we cannot ignore our own impressions.”

“Your impression was what you said it was?” said Jessica.

“I suppose so, or I should not have said it,” said Anna, with her normal awkwardness. “No doubt it just came out, as it stood in my mind. That is my accepted way, and I must be taken as I am. I can't make selections from my thoughts. It is all or nothing with me.”

“We none of us show the whole of our minds,” said Jessica, in a quiet tone. “And there are depths in all of us, that are better left undisturbed. We avoid a wrong both to other people and ourselves.”

“There you are again, with your piercing and wounding
and suggesting. Do let us stop preaching at each other. We have made known our mutual opinion, and that is surely enough. Indeed I think it should be. And are we to remain cooped up for ever in this harrowing place? It hardly seems a fit purpose for it, to be used as the background of this base and unseemly struggle. What made you choose it? I suppose some odd impulse of your own.” Anna rested her eyes in a new wonderment on her aunt. “I daresay you hardly explained it to yourself. I believe you are helpless, Aunt Jessica. You are like some dark angel, honestly and unselfishly serving the cause of evil.”

“You cannot tell me your meaning plainly?” said Jessica.

“No, I cannot. It is all vague and nameless to me. So, if you like, say I have imagined it. I am prepared to leave it like that. And I am not going to waste any more words. I see they are utterly wasted. And who am I, that I should judge another woman? If I had not been made the victim of your dark imaginings, actually dragged into this room, that had been sacrosanct to me, and used as a deliberate sacrifice, I should not have uttered a word. But the combination of horrors was too much. It broke down my defences, which are never too strong. I am not such a rocklike person at heart.”

Jessica turned to the door and spoke in her ordinary tones.

“Shall we go down to the others? They will be wondering what has kept us?”

“They will, and we shall be hard put to it to tell them. Are we to make the attempt? I am prepared to fall in with your decision. Do we take the line of complete revelation? Or are we to observe any reticence? I can accept either view.”

“Say what you will,” said Jessica. “There are things that should be kept for another time, but you can judge of them for yourself. You may tell anything to your father and brothers at home.”

“What a generous permission!” said Anna, hurrying
after her. “That would indeed be an advantage to them. Do you really think they could go on meeting you, if I actually revealed the whole?”

“It would not be difficult for us to keep apart. For a short time,” said Jessica.

Anna edged forward and led the way into the room, where the families were together, and spoke without any sign of being embarrassed or oppressed.

“Aunt Jessica and I have been indulging in mutual recriminations in Aunt Sukey's room. The setting of the scene was not my choice; I had not the advantage there. Aunt Jessica might have been in a room that she had never seen before, a startling view, even if she had not been there as often as she might. She seemed unconscious that the place had any memories. She was quite above any such weakness.” Anna hardly lowered her voice, as Jessica followed her.

“We thought you were never coming down,” said Bernard.

“Indeed I thought the same,” said his sister, sinking into a chair. “It is with a sense of surprise, that I find myself amongst you. I believe I have been standing all the time, though I did not realise it. Indeed I had other things to fill my mind. I am forbidden to reveal the matter of our discourse, but am sanctioned to do so at home. I have not made up my mind if it would be suitable hearing for you.”

“We will suffer any violence it may do us,” said Bernard.

“Well, do not preapre yourselves for anything interesting or uplifting. It is a sordid and degrading recital; at least I felt degraded by the business. Aunt Jessica held her head high above it all, but then she inaugurated it and carried it though, so I suppose she was equal to it. I did not find myself on her level.”

“My mother looks very tired,” said Terence.

“You need not worry about that,” said Anna, in a light tone. “Anyone else would be in a state of collapse. Her condition is a definite tribute to her vital powers.”

“You look very flushed,” said Terence.

“Have you any more personal observations to make?” said his cousin, putting her hands to her face. “It was a scene that would mantle anyone's cheek, or so it struck me in my inexperience. But I am warned against describing it here; it is to be reserved for my own fireside. You will not have the advantage of my account, but no doubt you incline to the other.”

“I think the decision to postpone it was a good one,” said Jessica.

“Let us change the subject by all means. But you cannot expect me to do it. My head is too full of what you put into it. I don't feel that I shall ever get free. It will pursue and haunt me all my days.”

“Your aunt meant what she said, my daughter,” said Benjamin.

Anna gave a laugh.

“You make me wonder what you would say to my late experience, when you speak to me as if I were a child. And talk as if Aunt Jessica's words must point the way to the light.”

Jessica sat down and drew the two children to her side. Their surprise made them unresponsive, and her face contracted in shock and fear. Anna kept her eyes from her, and joined in the talk.

“You have been troubled, my daughter,” said Benjamin, in a low tone.

“Well, I should be an odd person if I had not,” said Anna, at her ordinary pitch. “I think I stood up to it fairly well. I congratulate myself on a reserve of strength that I did not know I possessed. I was not equal to what confronted me, but no normal woman would have been. I almost returned to the beliefs of infancy, and credited the tales of Satanic power. So Aunt Jessica has been the means of restoring my childhood's faith, a suitable office for her, and a suitable part of the faith, if truth were known.”

Jessica rose and led the children from the room.

“You have driven Aunt Jessica away,” said Esmond. “That is an odd thing to happen in her house.”

“Not compared to the other things that happen there. They set a standard that makes the house a harbour for anything. I should feel I was talking in a strange way enough, if I were doing it anywhere else.”

“What in the world has passed between you?”

“This house is not the place to reveal it. Aunt Jessica was firm there, though she did not scruple to stage the scene in its inner shrine. But she has the right to say, and so we will leave the matter.”

“That is a relief,” said Tullia. “I was beginning to fear all sorts of revelations. If you choose to have private and unbelievable scenes, you owe it to other people to keep them to yourselves.”

“I cannot take that view of Anna's debt to us,” said Bernard.

“It takes two to make a scene,” said Terence.

“You are mistaken. It does not. It took one,” said Anna. “You are thinking of a quarrel. This was not that.”

“Aunt Jessica thought it would pollute the ears of her children,” said Esmond.

“And she is right,” said his sister. “It would.”

“I cannot think why you revealed that you had a dispute at all,” said Tullia.

“We should have given ourselves away,” said Anna, in a resigned tone, relaxing in her chair. “Our flustered condition would have betrayed us. It was better to get in first and intercept the flood of questions. And now the matter may rest.”

“That is not the word for its working in our minds,” said Bernard.

“Aunt Jessica did not look flustered,” said Esmond.

“She looked other things,” said Anna. “I don't think that can have escaped you.”

“They say that anticipation is the best part of anything,” said Bernard. “I find I cannot agree.”