“NOW, MISS LACY, will you lead us in?” said Thomas.
“Well, I feel it does need a certain initiative,” said Miss Lacy, laughing and going to the door.
Thomas remained on his feet at the head of the table. Grace at meals was the custom in his home, though he said it without conviction and sometimes with discomfiture. Jessica’s word on such matters was law, and he had been surprised to find how many of the kind there were, not having grasped the truth of her assertion that religion entered into the whole of life. The discovery that it was her habit to pray for him, marked a stage in their relation; and it was at this time that Jessica realised that she was second to his daughter in his heart.
“Thirteen at the table!” said Tullia, checking herself as she was about to sit down.
“What does that mean?” said Bernard.
“That the person who sits down first, will be dead within a certain time; I forget how long,” said Tullia, in a tone of merely quoting a belief.
“Then I ought to be the one to do so,” said Sukey, not seeming to think of suiting her action to her words. “It is so much more likely for me than for anyone else.”
“Then do not dream of it, Aunt Sukey,” said Bernard. “You would be sustaining too many of the threats of fate.”
“Well, I will do as I am told,” said Sukey, continuing to stand.
Thomas’s eyes had a smile in them, as they went from face to face. He was free from superstition and at ease to observe the scene;
“Men wait until the women are seated,” said Terence.
“Perhaps it is true that the real demands of life fall on the latter,” said Miss Lacy.
“It is a good thing the children are not here,” said Florence in a serious tone.
“It would save the situation,” said Bernard. “We should be fifteen.”
“We do not remedy it by not sitting down,” said Benjamin. “Our anxiety can only be transferred to other people.”
“If you do not feel it is improved, you are a person by yourself,” said Terence.
“Father does not deny he is that,” said Bernard.
Benjamin did not do so, but had his own grounds for the belief.
“I am superstitious, I know,” said Anna, standing at a distance from her chair. “I am not going to pretend I am not.”
“Aren’t you really?” said Terence. “Then you cannot pretend that you do not rank your life above other people’s.”
“Well, everyone does that.”
“No, you do not pretend,” said her cousin, “but I think I am still going to.”
“Shall I go and fetch the children?” said Reuben, his voice betraying complacence in his separation from these.
“I do not mind being the first to sit down,” said Jenney, in a hesitating tone.
“No, don’t do it, Jenney,” said Reuben at once.
“I wonder how many of us really believe it,” said Tullia, tapping her fingers on the table.
“We cannot say that,” said Bernard. “We see it is a deep and universal faith.”
“No one is sure that there might not be ‘something in it,’ ” said Miss Lacy. “These things may have some reason behind them, some series of links in their history.”
“Something more powerful than history is here,” said Thomas.
“How dreadful we all think it is to die!” said Jenney, in a deprecating tone.
“Of course we do,” said Terence. “Or why should we send for doctors when we are in danger of it, and execute people when they inflict it on us?”
“Perhaps this little difficulty may give you some insight into my life, as I live it day by day,” said Sukey.
“I really thought of that at once,” said Bernard.
“Yes, I think several of you did,” said Sukey.
“It may give us some insight into ourselves,” said Anna.
“That is what I was going to say,” said Jessica.
“Then we are at one, Aunt Jessica, for once.”
“Somehow that does seem odd,” murmured Terence.
“Quite true; I quite agree,” said his cousin.
“But it is nice of Aunt Sukey,” said Terence. “She persists in thinking good of people. If she did not, I don’t know what she would think.”
“That her position was not too good,” said Anna, in a mutter.
“Did we need insight into ourselves?” said Bernard. “It is a matter on which it is hard to be deceived. We can only hope that other people are deceived about us.”
“We know they can’t be, as they can judge us by themselves,” said Terence.
Miss Lacy went into laughter, and gave her chair an audible pull, as if she might sit down on it at any moment.
Florence regarded the action with an enigmatic face.
“It doesn’t seem that we ought to feel like this,” said Jenney, looking at her chair with an almost wistful expression.
“Well, we never meant people to know we did,” said Bernard.
“It is the last person who sits down, who takes the risk,” said Thomas, with his lips grave.
“Is this pause a real one?” said Terence. “It seems to be full of so much.”
“We are living at our highest pitch,” said Bernard. “The moment will live in our memory.”
“So I always live at a higher pitch than other people,” said Sukey. “When I see how this touch of imaginary risk affects them, I feel that I may live as much in my short time as they in their long one. It is true that we live in deeds, not years.”
The grating of a chair was heard, and Tullia sank into it, as if she lacked the energy to stand for another moment. Sukey did the same, as if it were also for her the only course. A chorus of grating ensued, and as people glanced about to be assured of their personal timeliness, Jessica was seen to be standing by her chair with her usual expression.
“We ought not to let a superstition influence our actions. And I thought Miss Jennings meant to be the last, and we could not let a guest do that for us.”
“Surely some confusion of thought,” murmured Tullia, stooping forward in an attitude of exhaustion.
“When will Mother sit down?” said Terence. “And who was the last to do so, if she does not?”
Jessica gave him a smile and took her seat.
“Well, as Aunt Jessica has sacrificed herself, there is nothing to do but take advantage of it,” said Anna, unfolding her napkin.
Tullia followed the example, seeming hardly to know what she did. Sukey turned to her neighbour and spoke with a faint smile.
“Well, whatever risk my sister has taken, it is not more than I face with every hour of my life.”
“Aunt Sukey’s reactions are so natural,” said Terence. “They are what mine would be in her place. And I find that so surprising.”
“Well, now, how do we feel about it?” said Miss Lacy. “Is our uneasiness for ourselves transferred to another? Or did we not really have any uneasiness, or how was it?”
“Of course we had it,” said Bernard. “Or we should have got the credit of sitting down first or last, or whatever it was.”
“You know it was last,” said Anna.
“If anyone had sat down first, in the first place, he would have done well,” said Thomas.
“The anxiety was too slight to count much for anyone else,” said Terence. “Of course everything counts for ourselves.”
“Oh, there was a real hard core of uneasiness,” said Anna. “You can’t get away from that.”
“No, I suppose it is no good to try,” said her cousin.
“Oh, I don’t think we were really nervous about it,” said Jenney, in a tone of compunction, looking at Jessica.
“I daresay you were not,” said Bernard. “I think you have almost proved it. You would have faced the danger, if Reuben had permitted it.”
“It was clearly not a woman’s business,” said Reuben, shortly.
“Nor a boy’s either, as you saw it,” said Esmond.
“Well, perhaps it was not,” said Thomas.
“The youngest would have the most life to lose,” said Anna. “He would be making the greatest sacrifice.”
“It must be recognised that the palm goes to Miss Jennings,” said Miss Lacy. “After Mrs. Calderon, of course.”
“It is mean of us to pass it off lightly,” said Terence. “But I don’t see what else to do. I can hardly admit that I valued my life above my mother’s.”
“Proving it does seem to be enough,” said Esmond.
“Suppose something should come of it,” said Jenney, half to herself. “Then we should have to reproach ourselves.”
“But congratulate ourselves, too, I suppose,” said Anna.
“Nothing will come of it” said Jessica, in a quiet voice. “If anything does, or seems to, it will be what would have come anyhow.”
“Why must we continue in this confusion?” murmured Tullia. “Are we never to emerge from it?”
“It is a pity if none of these things is true,” said Terence. “If we cannot protect ourselves by letting other people be the thirteenth, and take the path underneath the ladder, and all of it. It seems to make life not more safe, but less so.”
“You have wasted a good deal of contrivance, I suppose,” said Anna.
“I don’t think it is quite wasted. I think it is just worth while to do it.”
“Uncle Thomas was making sport for himself,” said Bernard.
“And not without some success,” said his uncle.
“Oh, you did not sit down last, any more than anyone else did, Uncle Thomas,” said Anna. “Don’t think that we did not notice it.”
“We can’t make out that the matter was not real to us,” said Esmond.
“Have we not done a little towards it?” said Terence.
“Aunt Jessica dared what strong men flinched at,” said Bernard. “How many of us were strong, flinching men?”
“Four,” said Terence.
“Five,” said Anna. “Father cannot be excepted.”
“I did not mean to except him,” said Terence. “I only felt that I was not a strong man myself, though of course a flinching one.”
“Then your sacrifice would have been less,” said Esmond. “Your chance of life is slighter.”
“But life is especially precious when it hangs by a frail thread. And weakly lives have that way of outlasting others.”
“Well, the courage of womanhood has come up to the test,” said Miss Lacy.
“I was always afraid I was not a womanly person,” said Claribel. “And now I know that my level is that of men.”
“Oh, courage; what is it?” said Tullia.
“It is the great quality of daring to risk oneself,” said Bernard. “Moral courage is supposed to be the best, but that may be because it is impossible to show the other. We must feel that we have some kind.”
“Why is it so great?” said Tullia, almost absently.
“Well, we will hope it is not, as we have not shown it, and someone else has. But I fear that it is.”
“I have to show it in every hour of each day,” said Sukey. “Well, it ought to make me appreciate my sister’s showing it on one occasion. And I think I can say that it does. But I did not feel it was for me to make a further call on mine. I am sometimes afraid it may give out one day. And then where shall I be?”
“Having to show it so much must make you think rather little of an isolated instance of it,” said Anna.
“No, I must not let it have that effect on me,” said Sukey, in a tone so much lighter, that Jessica was startled by her instant response to sympathy. “You will tell me if you think I am letting my own suffering blunt me to that of others. I would not get like that, even for the time I have left. I would not become so unworthy of the self I once was.”
“It seems better to have no earlier self,” said Bernard.
“It seems easier,” said Anna, brusquely.
“If Aunt Sukey had sat down last, she would have lived her last days in a blaze of glory,” said Terence, not meaning his words to reach his aunt’s ears.
’’ I should have said that she did enough of deserving glory, as it is,” said Anna, with the opposite intention for hers.
“No, I should only have been thought to be making a small sacrifice, as I had not much to lose,” said Sukey, with a smile of gratitude for Anna. “It would not be realised that having only a little of something may add to its value, especially when the something is life itself.”
“We might all have sat down last,” said Thomas, looking with a light in his eyes at the faces round him. “We are fourteen at the table.”
His hearers turned from side to side in rapid calculation.
“Oh!” said Claribel, with almost a scream in her voice. “Then there was something in the instinct that prompted me to come to-day! I wondered if I should be de trop, and if my young relatives would be better without me, and my elder ones be sufficient to themselves, and all the other things that occur to the worrying and ultra-sensitive. And here I am, justified of myself, and exonerated and even appreciated by other people! I feel in quite a different frame of mind; I am quite uplifted.”
“I hope the effect is the same upon us all,” said Esmond. “Each one has an equal right to it.”
“You have saved us from dark and dreadful things,” said Terence to Claribel. “Now no one can know that I did not see we were fourteen at the table, and was not mischievously silent about it. Or anyhow no one can prove it.”
“Yes, you owe it to me. I was the only person whose coming was in any doubt. I am the pivot upon which the structure turns.”
“No, no, we cannot say it,” said Thomas, shaking his head, “though the boldness of the claim almost justifies it.”
“We were trembling with love of life and fear of death,” said Bernard.
“We were all in whimsical mood,” said Miss Lacy.
“But many things take cover behind Miss Lacy’s word,” said Thomas.
“I think a good many are going to,” said Benjamin.
“Why did you not sit down first, Father?” said Anna.
“For the reasons that prevented other people from doing so,” said Benjamin, preferring the sacrifice of an honest claim to shyness to facing his daughter’s public disbelief.
“Did you know from the first that we were fourteen, Uncle Thomas?” said Anna.
“No, I had just discovered it. I put you out of your misery at once.”
“What a good thing there was nothing in it, after all!” said Jenney, in a tone of gratitude.
“You again prove your personal heroism,” said Bernard.
“Is there never to be an end of that in people?” said Terence. “I am tired of cringing before their nobility.”
“You must not expect to appear a hero,” said Claribel. “I cannot manage as much as that for you.”
“How do you feel about it, Aunt Jessica?” said Anna. “Have you any sense of relief? Or were you sincere in giving the impression that you thought there was nothing in it?”
“I have a faint feeling of relief,” said Jessica, with simple honesty, “but I am riot proud of myself for having it.”
“So Aunt Jessica is not so far above other people, after all,” said Anna, looking round.
“What an odd deduction!” said Esmond.
“I wish it were the right one,” said Terence. “I do not like cutting such a sorry figure beside my mother.”
“Well, a mother is a person you should be able to look up to, my son,” said Thomas.
“But is a son one that she should be obliged to look down on? Of course I am thinking of her and not of myself.”
“You are fortunate. Most of us are thinking of her and of ourselves as well,” said Benjamin. “A comparison is odious and unavoidable.”
“Uncle Thomas was rash in putting his family to the test,” said Esmond.
“Well, our family did not come out any better,” said Anna.
“No, but he might be less concerned with that.”
“I am glad that Bernard and Esmond both put their own lives first,” said Terence.
“We all did that,” said Anna. “But I suppose women are allowed to do such things.”
“Think of the difference between what Aunt Jessica did, and what it was permitted her to do,” said Bernard.
“I think it was unmanly of Father to expose her to public trial,” said Terence. “Suppose she had not come out so nobly?”
“You see how well I knew her,” said Thomas.
“Will you find it possible to settle down amongst such a bevy of strangers?” said Tullia to Florence, as if the other subject were exhausted for her.
“I shall get used to it. I shall have to. I have no home but Aunt Emma’s.”
“You will show the kind of courage that is the hardest,” said Terence. “We have all missed the chance of showing the other kind, and it would have had so many witnesses. The worst of the first is that it never has any.”
“Did you find your morning with Reuben what you wanted, Terence?” said Benjamin, going as far as he would go, in enquiring after his son’s education.
“Yes, I did, thank you, Uncle.”
“You spent most of it out of doors, didn’t you?” said Anna.
“Yes, that was what I wanted.”
“I hope Reuben passed the time more profitably.”
“I hope so. He should be learning independence.”
“It strikes me that you assume he has learnt it.”
“That is the modern method of training. Trust a boy, and he will be worthy of trust. Whatever attribute you assign to him, turns out to be his. You really assign it.”
“It is a pleasant method for the teacher,” said Anna.
“Yes, but a teacher should enjoy his work. If he does not, he is not a born teacher.”
“Terence’s teaching is his own affair, my daughter,” said Benjamin.
“Oh, it is mine too, Father. I am not going to be deprived of all part and parcel in Reuben, because he is having his lessons in another house. I have not brought him up from babyhood for that.”
“It is Jenney who has performed that office for him,” said Esmond.
“Well, she is to be allowed to take a little interest in him too.”
“I think there is much in what Anna says,” said Sukey. “And I am sure both Terence and Reuben agree.”
“Yes, I like as many apron-strings as I can get, Aunt Sukey,” said Reuben. “I have not had the chance of being the ordinary embarrassed boy. And I daresay it is not much loss for me or other people.”
“We see the result of Terence’s method,” said Bernard. “Reuben has made a great advance.”
“He always talked like a book,” said Anna.
“My cousin, Anna, would pin me to a desk,” said Terence.
“I only assumed that your choosing to be a tutor had mapped out that course for you.”
“Did I really choose to be it? Then what injustice people do me!”
“Teaching by default,” said Miss Lacy, with a musing air; “I have never tried that method.”
“Well, you could hardly stay at home, by way of undertaking two children’s education,” said Anna.
“Could I not? I wonder,” said Miss Lacy, in independent consideration.
“These new ideas of teaching are an eye-opener to me,” said Anna.
“Are you a person who does useful things?” said Tullia to Florence.
“I cannot do much that is any good,” said the latter.
“We can’t all help the world in a workaday way,” said Miss Lacy, acquiescent in owning a relative who did not earn her support. “Some of us must depend on other people. And after all, it shows trust; it shows a belief in other people’s powers; it argues a certain generosity. Oh, we can underestimate the qualities of the dependent. We must not sweep people aside, because they toil not, neither do they spin.”
“It sounds discreditable to belong to the lilies of the field,” said Tullia.
“You are mistaken,” said Esmond.
“It is the right company for some of us,” said Thomas, looking at his daughter.
“I am worried about our rising from the table,” said Terence. “Is it the person who gets up last, who dies in a short time? Suppose Mother’s sacrifice has been in vain, and we are all once more in danger?”
“I ought to have thought of our being thirteen,” said Jessica. “It was foolish to forget the superstition.”
“Was it the action of a homicide or suicide?” said Terence. “I think you have no choice but to make it the latter.”
“Well, I can do so, my son. I will stay in my seat until you have all left yours.”
“One, two, three, go!” said Thomas, rising at the last word and looking round the table.
“Dear me, I wonder we were not all startled into jumping higher than we did,” said Miss Lacy, giving the explanation of such action on her part.
“We are fourteen at the table,” said Tullia, lifting her shoulders and speaking with a sigh.
“I wish I could realise it,” said Terence. “It would save me so much.”
“It is all right, Florence, my dear,” said Jessica, smiling. “We are really fourteen.”
“It is all this wretched uncertainty,” said her son.
“Can’t we any of us count?” said Anna.
“I am glad that Aunt Jessica and Aunt Sukey are not both facing death,” said Bernard. “It would be an overwhelming state of affairs in a family.”
“Death has a way of running in families,” said Thomas.
“If we were immortal, we should begin to complain of that,” said Miss Lacy.
“No, I think that is an error, though a usual one,” said Benjamin.
“It is odd that it should be so common,” said Thomas, “when we conceive the highest beings of our imagination, such as gods and angels, as immortal.”
“We say it to comfort ourselves,” said Terence. “We condemn everlasting life, to enable us to face a limited one. We must have something to help us to bear it.”
Jessica rose to end the talk, not so much because it was uttered too low for her ears, as because when this was so, she mistrusted its nature.
“I must go upstairs and give an eye to the children.”
“I will go too,” said Terence. “I shall be in constant attendance on my mother, in atonement for rating my life above hers.”
“In public too,” said Anna.
“Well, my atonement will also be public. And of course everyone would do it in private. Acts of preferring other people’s lives to your own are always done publicly. People don’t yield belts and boats to women behind the scenes. Drowned heroes have been seen for the last time in the act of relinquishing them. Seen doing it; that is the point. And captains stand in a prominent part of their ships, to go down with them, and sometimes in full uniform. But my public behaviour was on a level with my private, and that is too low a standard. People could only sympathise with it in their hearts, and that means openly condemning it.”
“What is that noise?” said Jessica, as they approached the schoolroom.
“The sound of family strife,” said Terence.
His mother hastily opened the door.
“You are not fighting, are you?” she said, with a hopefulness in the face of circumstances, that was hardly characteristic.
The combatants fell apart, startled by discovery, but mastered by their passions. Their eyes, uncertain on their mother and smouldering on each other, ranged to and fro.
“What is it all about?” said Jessica.
Her children appeared to be at a loss, a truer impression of their state of mind than she knew.
“We pulled the wish-bone,” said Dora.
“We feel we know the whole,” said Terence.
“And did you both want the winning side?” said Jessica. “You must have known that only one could have it. That is the point of pulling it.”
Julius and Dora exchanged a glance, this time of the fellow-feeling of the misunderstood.
“Julius, you should never fight with a girl, and one younger than yourself. And, Dora, a little sister should set her brother an example. You both understand me, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said the children, discerning no injustice in the differentiation, and therefore untroubled by it.
“And here is Father, come to see that you have been quarrelling,” said Jessica, as if this aggravated the position, as the culprits felt it did.
“Well, what have you to say for yourselves?” said Thomas, in a grave tone.
The children met each other’s eyes in sympathy. Julius had unfairly twisted the bone, but confession would have startled and embarrassed his sister, and added to their list of unmentionable memories.
“Well, I am sure you are both sorry now,” said Jessica, wiser for occasions when she had tried to exact this statement. So we won’t talk any more about it. Indeed, I think the less said about it, the better.”
Julius and Dora wondered, not for the first time, what had led to this fortunate method of winding up a painful situation, and also wondered if circumstances ever arose that were entirely unmentionable.
“And why have you not eaten your pudding?” said their mother, believing herself to be broaching a different subject.
“Because the matter no longer under discussion supervened,” said Terence.
“Well, you had better have it for tea,” said Jessica. “It is as good cold as hot. And just now it would remind you too much of what is better forgotten.”
“Mother and the pudding seem to have something in common,” said Thomas, causing some mirth.
“And perhaps you will think, when you eat it, of the reason for your having it at such a different time.”
“Between the pair of them, there is no escape,” said Terence.
“And now you had better run out into the air,” said Jessica, putting a hint of reproach into her recommendation of a wholesome atmosphere. “And I hope that cobwebs of all kinds will be blown away.”
The children joined hands and ran out of the room, Jessica smiling after them. They walked to the rock with the even steps natural to an errand that went without saying, swinging each other’s hands in unspoken amity. It did not occur to them to discuss the ethics of the situation. The guilt was of a kind that might have belonged to either; neither would have felt any shame in incurring it; they had no condemnation of it and little interest in it.
“O great and good and powerful god, Chung,” prayed Dora, “we beseech thee to pardon the evil passions that assailed us and overcame our strength.”
“Me twisting the bone,” said Julius, with a nudge of reminder.
“And to pardon this thy servant, in that he perverted justice and yielded to the lust of desire,” continued Dora, in quité unretributive tones, “and to guide us both into the way of righteousness and peace. For Sung Li’s sake, amen.”
“For Sung Li’s sake, amen. We ought to do something for Chung now, so as not to be always asking things and doing nothing,” said Julius, looking about him, and suddenly standing transfixed as though by an incredible sight. “There is Reuben watching us! As if he had a part in our mysteries! Our service in our temple is no longer private to ourselves.”
Reuben was standing with his eyes upon them, and a face expressive of wonder, interest, and the feelings called for by an occasion of worship.
“What are you doing, intruding upon the hidden and sacred orgies?” said Julius, striking ah attitude and employing tones of rhetoric, while Dora accepted the occasion for masculine initiative. “Who are you, that you should break in upon things alien to your common clay? Away, you of the peering eyes and the straying mind. Seek fitter objects for your prying.”
“I am not prying. I only came the same way as you did. Aunt Jessica told me to follow you. How could I know there was anything secret going on by this rock?”
“The great voice broods over it, and the mighty whispers surround it,” said Dora, in stern rejoinder.
“Are you about to withdraw your steps, or are we to seek strength from the god to assail you?” said Julius, maintaining his threatening posture. “Strength will descend on us in the needed measure.”
“I can go, if you want me to; but couldn’t I be a humbler kind of worshipper? There are different grades of service.”
Julius looked at his sister at this evidence of humility and understanding.
“Only the two chosen of the god minister in the temple of the most high,” he said in a wavering tone.
“But couldn’t I be a sort of servitor?”
Dora and Julius met each other’s eyes, and both fell on their knees.
“Will the god receive the lame and halt attendance of this stray suppliant?” said Dora.
“If so, let him gird his loins and attend humbly in the seat of the lowly,” said Julius, turning his head and makng a sign of injunction.
Reuben drew nearer and knelt behind the pair, and the three, as if at a signal, bowed their heads and moved their hands in unison.
“O great and good and powerful god, Chung, graciously accept this our lowly kinsman as a servitor in thy temple. For great is his need of thy guidance and the teaching of thy word. Lighten his affliction, and grant him the heart of the believer. For Sung Li’s sake, amen.”
“And if you want to make a private intercession, you may continue on your knees for one swift moment,” said Julius, rising and casting a look in his cousin. “But take heed that your words be brief, and that you do not importune the god, or admit any thought or word of the scorner.”
“O great and good and powerful god, Chung,” muttered Reuben, “grant that I may grow up into an absolutely normal man. And grant me the favour and the friendship of thy servant, Terence. For Sung Li’s sake, amen.”
He rose and followed his cousins, with the feeling that he had after stirring a wish into the Christmas pudding, that if there were anything in these problematic forces, they could now only operate in his favour.