Elders and Betters (25 page)

Jessica came to meet them, and greeted them in turn without distinction.

“We are more glad to see you than we have ever been. As we get to be fewer, each fills a larger place. We are trying not to be a sadder family, but we must feel a smaller one.”

“An odd effort under the circumstances,” muttered Anna to her brothers. “It would be strange if it were crowned by success.”

“Aunt Sukey will always be in this hall, for the people who saw her here,” said Bernard.

“Not for me,” said his sister, shaking her head. “I don't get off so easily. Only the reality does for me. I am sorry to be such a material person, but so it is. It seems to me that the essence of the household is gone.”

“I want you to come and talk to me about her,” said Jessica, laying her hand on her niece's shoulder. “Her last hour was spent with you, and I want to know how she lived it. Those minutes are always in my mind.”

“I will do what I can,” said Anna, turning to follow. “But it seems to me that I have done it several times. I can't make the hour different from what it was, you know. I am not good at tinkering with the truth. If it tumbles out, whole and plain, I cannot be taken to account.”

“The truth is what I want,” said Jessica. “It is what I feel I must have.”

She guided her niece up the stairs and was entering her sister's room, when Anna drew back and put both her hands before her face.

“Oh, no, no, I can't, please; I can't quite manage this. I am not such a tough person as you seem to think. You are a deal in advance of me, if this is your standard. I can't quite meet you on this ground.”

Jessica drew her into the room, as if she had not heard. It was necessary to do as she did, and words were wasted. Her face had something aloof and almost empty about it, as if she were not so much indifferent to daily things, as apart from them.

“You quite bring my heart into my mouth,” said Anna, forcing an easier tone. “To make such a parade of a thing like this is ghoulish, and has something ominous about it. I don't know what your purpose is, but does it really need this kind of foundation?”

“I want you to tell me just what happened in that last hour,” said Jessica.

“I have told you. I have given an account of it more
than once. And I am all against going over the same ground again and again. It leads to unconscious fabrication. I have given you the truth and you must be content. Asking for elaboration of it is really asking for the other thing.”

“Have I had the truth?” said Jessica, in a tone that was as impersonal as if she were thinking aloud.

Anna threw up her brows and made a hopeless gesture.

“What you have told me, is not the truth to me.”

“I daresay it is not,” said Anna, with a touch of sympathy. “Not the truth as you would like to have it. But I warned you that I could not adapt it. It would never do to begin.”

“I knew my sister to the bottom of her heart. Our minds were open to each other. And she did not destroy her old will, if she was herself; and to my mind she was. Tell me what happened, Anna?”

“I do not know. How can I? It had happened before I saw her. Only the reaction remained, and I will not be led into basing imaginary scenes on that. I am going to be firm there. You show me the danger.”

“What did she say about it all? What were her exact words? I must know for my own ease of mind. I do not want anything to come of it.”

“Good heavens, what strange, suggestive speeches!” said Anna, raising her eyes full to her aunt's. “I shall hardly know what to think. And naturally I will not respond to your questioning, if it is to lead to this. I should have thought that Aunt Sukey's death was enough in itself, without our trying to get more out of it. I don't feel I can dramatise the situation, Aunt Jessica. Aunt Sukey did not say that you had been the one figure in her life, or that her main feeling was gratitude to you, or anything of that kind. If that is what you want to hear, I cannot help you. You know that she was vexed and upset on that day, indeed was bitter against all of you. If I told you she was not, you would know it was a falsehood. You must not lay this stress on the truth, and then expect me to stretch it. And I am without the power of doing so; it is simply left out
of me. I told you that, if you asked for the truth, you would get it. I gave you fair warning.”

“She would not have done that to me and mine,” said Jessica, looking past her niece. “It was not in her. That is how she came to make the pretence of doing it. If it had been her purpose, she would not have spoken of it.”

“Oh, I don't understand your tortuous minds! You mean something and say nothing, or you mean one thing and say another. That is why you expect me to do it. And expect Aunt Sukey to do it too; expect that she did it, I mean, which seems to be worse. And I don't think it was in her, to use your own phrase. And anyhow it is not in me, and you had better realise it, or we shall go on for ever. If you mean a thing, you would not speak of it! What a key to the difference between us!”

“Shall I ever know what she felt and what she suffered?”

“Well, I have done my best for you, and can do no more. I told you she felt you had failed her, or rather that your family had. Not that she ever said a word against you, yourself, Aunt Jessica. And if she meant the opposite of what” she said, you ought to take comfort.”

“You are harsh to me,” said Jessica, turning her eyes on her niece with sudden sight in them.

“And what are you to me? A pattern of flattering kindness?”

“I want the truth,” said Jessica, almost with a moan in her voice. “I feel I must have it.”

“Well you have it. You can take heart,” said Anna, with a touch of rough kindliness. “And surely things are not so bad, that they might not be worse. In a family of this kind, and with Aunt Sukey as she was, I wonder they were not worse. You have nothing on your mind, that would not be the lot of nine people out of ten. And why should anyone expect to be the tenth?”

Jessica shook her head, in rejection of the words or the essence of them, and stood as though her eyes were on something that Anna did not see.

“Well can we adjourn the meeting?” said Anna. “Or rather dissolve it, as I cannot live under the threat of its being called again.”

“Did she tell you she had burned a will?” said Jessica. “One of your brothers said something about it, but you did not mention it to me.”

“She said she had burned some papers,” said Anna, in a faintly impatient but natural tone. “And I think it was to you that I spoke of it first. It would naturally have been. I did not know what they were. How could I, as she did not say? It seemed to be a weight off her mind, as I have said. I am not going to keep saying it again. That is how distortion begins.”

“You did not see the two wills together?”

“I did not see any will, or know that there was one. How could I, as I was not told? Aunt Sukey did not take me into her confidence. I suppose I had not got as far as that with her. I wish I could feel that I had; I should like to think I knew the whole of her mind. And I might have given her better companionship in that last hour. I see she steered her way alone. But I suppose she always did, as I suppose we all do really. I daresay it isn't anything to have on one's mind.”

“She must have had the two wills in her hands at the same moment.”

“I should have thought it would be more natural to keep them apart, especially as she is so methodical and definite. Was, I should say; I shall never get into the way of speaking of her in the past.”

“There is no need to think of her like that,” said Jessica, in an automatic tone, her eyes looking beyond her niece.

“Well, have I done all I can? Is the matter at an end? I think I must feel that it is, before we leave it. I can't feel that I am liable to be called up here, and worked upon at any moment. I should not dare to come to the house. It is almost too much for me, this having things probed and raked in the room where Aunt Sukey lived and died. And
are not these matters personal to herself? Must we pry into them? It seems like taking advantage of her death. Or it does for me, as I was excluded from them. She had a right to keep things to herself as far as she wished; and there I would choose to leave it.”

“She must have put the wrong will back into the desk,” said Jessica, as if she had not heard the words, or had passed them over.

“Then she kept the wrong one in her hands, and put the same wrong one on the fire. Well, it was not like Aunt Sukey. That is all that can be said.”

“She might not have acted according to herself. She would hardly have been herself an hour before her death. The forces of her system would have been running down.”

“Oh, don't,” said Anna, putting up her hands, as if to ward off a blow. “You are a strong, unshrinking person, and no mistake. I feel a kind of admiration for you. But I am not equal to it. It is beyond my limit, this probing into what we dare not think of. What I dare not think of, I suppose I should say; I must not ascribe the same weakness to you. Who would have thought that you would be the tough subject, and I the squeamish one? I should have been the last person to classify us like that.”

“It would have been an easy thing to do,” went on Jessica, still with the air of passing over Anna's words. “And she might have put the other will on the fire without looking at it.”

“No, no, not Aunt Sukey,” said Anna, shaking her head. “She would look to see she had the right one, a dozen times. Any failure in nervous balance would come out like that. That would have been the line of her weakness.”

“In her last hours we cannot know.”

“Oh, may we not leave those last hours? She was herself when I saw her, and I have a right to that memory. There is nothing gained by tampering with it.”

“It is easy to imagine the scene,” said Jessica.

“Why should she have taken the old will out of the desk at all?”

“She took it out to copy it,” said Jessica, her eyes seeming to be fixed on the scene. “And she meant to put it back; I could tell by her voice and her eyes. She meant to destroy the other. But if only I could be quite sure!”

“That new one she had just made? What an odd purpose for it! Well, that is not what she did, as seems to me natural enough. The other thing is done, and there is no help for it. We cannot know that she was the victim of error or delusion or whatever you assume. I cannot think how you can think so, when you knew her. But don't let us have the last hours again, if you don't mind. I have had enough of it.” As Anna became inured to the scene, her manner was more what it was in her home.

“That is how she came to have the two wills in her hands,” said Jessica.

“She had nothing in them, when I was there. Her hands were folded in her lap. Something was on the fire, or had been on it, and the will was in the desk. Or so I was told later.”

“Sukey never folded her hands,” said Jessica, with no touch of pouncing on a weak point; simply in expression of her thought.

“Oh, well, idle in her lap. No, I don't think she did fold them. Actually they were working on her lap, but there did not seem to be any need to press that home. They were closing and unclosing, if you must have the scene as it was. You make it quite impossible to save you anything. And how can you say so positively what she did? You did not watch her quite so faithfully, or that was not her impression. Indeed that was the root of the trouble. And if her system was running down—isn't that what you said?”—Anna drew in her brows with a look of pain—“surely to sit without occupation was natural. And she was never a busy person.”

“I can imagine her hands working,” said Jessica, once again speaking to herself.

“Oh, she had been through the worst stage,” said Anna, with a note of encouragement. “When I reached her, it was the calm after the storm, or anyhow the stage of the last echoes of it. She was at peace at the last. You may be quite easy about that. I left her without any sort of misgiving. She had fallen asleep, as I have said. I told you that was the result of my attentions.”

“Anna,” said Jessica, in a tone that held no sudden difference, but seemed to come from gathering purpose, “if you ever wanted to tell me anything, you would not be afraid? I would not say a word, if you would rather I did not. And there need be no change in the disposal of the money; that would not be mentioned between us. I only feel that you have no mother, and that your life has had many temptations and little guidance. You would let me help you, as someone who knows that? You would impose your conditions, and trust me to keep them. You would not hesitate?”

There was a just perceptible pause.

“Indeed I should,” said Anna, almost with a laugh. “You are the last person I would face in such a situation, if I can imagine myself in one, which I cannot, as complexities and soul-subtleties are not within my range. And I believe you would almost create such a crisis. I can hardly be in your presence without feeling all kinds of uncertainties and possibilities welling up within me.” Anna stood with her eyes on her aunt's face and a look of helpless bewilderment. “I should not know myself, if I spent much time with you. You would make anyone feel a criminal, indeed might make anyone be one. I begin to feel my mind reflecting your own. It must be ghastly to have such seething depths within one.”

Jessica looked into her niece's face.

“I wonder if other people see me like that.”

“Well, it is not your fault, if they don't,” said Anna, giving rein to her tongue. “You do your best to cast a cloud of gloom and guilt over everyone in your path. No one can
be with you, without being the victim of it, this instinct to drag from their minds anything and everything that it is their right and their duty to keep to themselves. People's little natural weaknesses are their own affair. Are you so free from them, yourself, that you must constitute yourself everyone else's critic and judge? It would hardly do to probe the depths of your mind. Even if I did feel some uncertainty about Aunt Sukey's wishes, there would be no great harm in giving myself the benefit of the doubt. Everyone would do it, as you have done it yourself. Indeed you give yourself the benefit of a doubt that does not exist. I am not going to yield to your peculiar method of coercion. It is unnatural and uncanny, and gives your opponent no chance. Anyone could use it, who would stoop so low. And to think that you are Aunt Sukey's sister, and held in equal esteem!”