Elders and Betters (29 page)

“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.”

“She killed herself, didn't she?” said Reuben. “Isn't that supposed to be a wicked thing to do?”

“For some people. There are different cases.”

“You can be punished for it by the law. I know you can, because Terence told me. Of course he didn't know that his mother was going to do it.”

“Hush. You cannot punish someone who is dead.”

“It was a case of attempted suicide. That is a crime.”

“It went further than that,” said Esmond. “It is an instance of success in the enterprise.”

Reuben went into discordant mirth.

“You have been talking to the servants,” said Anna.

“Of course he has. What else was he to do?” said Bernard.

“Does Father mind very much?” said Reuben, glancing at Benjamin and hardly lowering his voice.

“Very much. You know that he must,” said Jenney.

“You mind, yourself, don't you?” said Anna. “You were very fond of Aunt Jessica.”

Reuben held himself in a position for further jumping, a sign of indifference that was needed, as his eyes had filled. Benjamin took no notice of him, understanding the manifestation, but knowing it arose from feeling nothing to his own, and rather repelled than otherwise by the twofold difference.

“Will any of us have to go to the house?” said Anna. “I shall not be the first to volunteer.”

“Perhaps that would hardly be expected,” said Esmond.

“Oh, one never knows,” said Anna.

“I shall be going almost at once,” said Benjamin. “My place is with my sister's family. And some of you should come with me.”

“Well, I will face the music,” said his daughter. “I shall not be seeing Aunt Jessica, and can never be called upon to do that again. And I suppose nothing has come between me and the rest.”

“Aunt Jessica can't be buried in consecrated ground,” said Reuben, in a clear tone.

“Hush. Of course she can,” said Jenney.

“But suicides can't.”

“Hush. Don't use such a word. This was a sort of accident. It happened because she was not well.”

“There will be a verdict of unsound mind,” said Benjamin.

“And I believe a true one,” said Anna, “seldom though I daresay that is the case.”

“Then it sweeps away any reason for resentment.”

“Indeed it does, Father. There I quite agree. I begin to understand that feeling of protection I had towards her.”

“Poor Tullia!” said Bernard.

“Why, I think she will stand up to it better than most people,” said his sister. “I should rather say, ‘Poor Terence.' ”

“Doesn't Tullia mind things so very much?” said Reuben.

“Well, not as much as some of us perhaps. Or it always seems to me that she does not.”

“Perhaps she would say the same of you,” said Bernard.

“Oh, I daresay she would. People have often said it of me,” said Anna, with a resigned sigh. “Not that it seems to me that I am the right target for that particular shaft. But I don't look for much from that family, or from the women of it.”

“Why didn't Aunt Sukey live with us?” said Reuben.

“Well, I was too young for the charge, when the arrangement was made.”

“I daresay she would not have left you the money, if she had lived in our house. I expect people get tired of the people they live with.”

“There is something in that,” said Anna, in a sincere tone. “It is quite possible that she would not.”

“So the people who take care of other people, have all the trouble, and don't have so much money.”

“They had the advantage of having Aunt Sukey for all those years. I wish we had seen more of her.”

“Even though you might not have had the money?”

“We never think about wills, while people are alive,” said Jenney.

“Aunt Jessica must have thought about Aunt Sukey's. Or she wouldn't have minded when she found that it left things to Anna.”

“Well, we know she did think about it,” said Anna; “I am afraid too much. But that is a point where we need not copy her. So we will leave it now.”

“You can't help knowing that an invalid might die. And that means there will have to be a will. So you have to think about it.”

“We have thought enough about this one,” said Benjamin.

“Have you thought how you will miss Aunt Jessica?” said Anna to Reuben, in a tone of some reproach. “You know how you missed Aunt Sukey; and although this cannot be the same, it will make a great difference.”

“I think I am more sorry that we have lost Aunt Jessica.”

“I am sure you are sad about them both. It does seem a change in our life after a few short months. What an end to Father's plan of giving his time to his sisters!”

“I suppose we shouldn't have come here, if we had known they were going to die?”

“We should have done so all the more,” said Benjamin.

“And yet Father's being here did not make Aunt Jessica not do what she did,” said Reuben, casting his eyes about, as if undecided about their direction.

“Perhaps nothing would have done that, except not losing her sister,” said Jenney. “You must not tell Julius and Dora how it happened. They are to think their mother died in the same way as their aunt. Mind you remember, Reuben.”

“I don't expect they will talk about her. They have not said anything about Aunt Sukey since she died. Some people don't talk about people who are dead, and I don't think it is only children.”

“I could not follow that line,” said Anna. “I could never sweep someone I had cared for, off my lips and out of my mind like that.”

“It is your own idea that the one thing follows from the other,” said Esmond.

“It may be, but I hold to it none the less. I never think it is a sign of deep feeling to be able always to suppress it. A stronger thing would get out of hand sometimes.”

“Do people go to the funeral of a second aunt, when they have been to the first?” said Reuben.

“There is no need for you to go to this one,” said Jenney.

“Well, I know what a funeral is like now,” said Reuben, looking back at the heel of his boot.

“Reuben is open about the motives that govern his attendance,” said Esmond.

Benjamin looked at his youngest son, and knew that this was not the case.

“Why is it a sign of respect to display oneself at a person's obsequies?” said Anna.

“That need not take you to them,” said Esmond. “Your feeling stops short of that.”

“It both stops short and goes beyond,” said his sister.

“Have you done your lessons, Reuben?” said Jenney.

“No; I am not going to Terence to-morrow. I shall not see him until after the funeral.”

“Has he sent a message?” said Anna.

“No, but you don't go to people when they have lost somebody, anyhow when it is a mother.”