‘He knew just how much he meant to do,’ said Lester.
‘He knows why people dislike their benefactors,’ said Priscilla. ‘It is because they expect them to share equally with them, when of course they do not. That is why he expects us to dislike him.’
‘We are never to know our story?’ said her brother.
‘I feel that is confirmed today,’ said Susan. ‘Something made him go as far as he would ever go. It may be a good thing.’
‘It gives us a feeling of security,’ said Priscilla. ‘I daresay it would be too much for us to know. We might not be able to forgive Mother.’
The housekeeper entered the room.
‘Sir Jesse spoke to me today, miss. He has never done it before. He said he hoped I was taking care of you all.’
‘Why does he break his records all of a sudden?’ said Susan.
‘His son has broken one by dying,’ said Priscilla, ‘and that has put him on the course.’
‘How shall we behave when Sir Jesse dies?’ said Lester. ‘Shall we have to go to the funeral?’
‘You will have to represent us,’ said Susan.
‘What a good thing Susan knows these things!’ said Priscilla. ‘I could not answer such a question.’
‘I hope he will leave us as much as he allows us,’ said Lester, in an anxious tone. ‘He must know he will cause us great trouble if he does not.’
‘It is wonderful of people to think of other people’s needs after they are dead themselves,’ said Priscilla. ‘I always feel it is too much to expect.’
‘People don’t find it so,’ said Susan.
‘And we must not talk as if people were about to die, because they are old.’
‘There is something in the view,’ said Lester gravely.
‘It is too ordinary for us,’ said Priscilla. ‘We have tried to get our own touch, and we must not dispel it through carelessness.’
‘It does not sound as if it were natural,’ said Susan.
‘Well, things must often owe as much to art as to nature. I dare say the best things do.’
‘Does Sir Jesse respect or despise us?’ said Lester.
‘It is possible to do both,’ said Susan.
‘One feeling must get the upper hand,’ said her sister. ‘And though it is extraordinary, when he supports us, I believe in his case it is respect.’
‘He has quite an affection for you,’ said Lester.
‘Well, I have done much to earn it. They say that a conscious effort is not the best way to win affection, but it seems a fairly good way, and often the only one.’
‘We cannot deal only in the best methods,’ said Susan. ‘What would be the good of the others? And now they are so much good.’
‘We have got Sir Jesse’s visit over,’ said Lester. ‘He won’t come again for months.’
‘This is an extra visit, caused by the death of his son,’ said Susan.
‘You need not see him when he comes,’ said Priscilla.
‘It gives us a feeling of strain,’ said Lester. ‘We know we are in his power.’
‘I see how real the trouble has been, that I thought I had taken off you. But Sir Jesse does not resent our being alive when his son is dead. He seems to think he has something left in us. He must love us better than we deserve, or his grief draws him closer to us. It is strange to see these things really happening.’
‘Especially between Sir Jesse and us,’ said Lester.
‘Would he mind if one of us were to die?’ said Susan.
‘He would wish he had made things easier for us,’ said her sister. ‘People always wish they had given more help, when people are beyond it. Wishing it before would mean giving it. One does see how it gets put off.’
‘We shall never have to wish we had given help to Sir Jesse,’ said Lester, in a musing tone.
‘If one of us were to marry, would he reveal our parentage?’ said Susan.
‘I could not support a wife,’ said Lester, in a startled manner.
‘If we cannot find out by less drastic means, we will leave it,’ said Priscilla.
‘If only the photograph could speak!’ said Susan. ‘Sir Jesse never looks at it. It is not of much interest to him.’
‘He is careful never to look at it,’ said Lester.
‘Why are inanimate things supposed to be so communicative?’ said Priscilla. ‘It might tell us nothing. And it may be on the side of Sir Jesse.’
‘To think what we could tell the photograph!’ said Susan.
‘Well, not so much,’ said Lester.
‘There isn’t so much to be told,’ said Priscilla. ‘Photographs would find that.’
‘Mr Ridley Cranmer,’ said Mrs Morris at the door.
‘You are satisfactory friends to call upon,’ said Ridley, pausing inside the room, as if its size would hardly allow advance. ‘We can rely on finding you at home. It is not easy for an occupied man to appoint his time.’
‘I wonder if Mother likes to hear that about us,’ said Priscilla.
‘You still find that your mother’s photograph adds an interest to your life,’ said Ridley, resting his eyes on the chimneypiece. ‘I can understand that it suggests many pictures of the past. I wonder Sir Jesse did not grant it to you before.’
‘He only found it by accident,’ said Susan.
‘Is that the case?’ said Ridley. ‘I believe Sir Jesse has paid you a visit this afternoon?’
‘Yes, he has just gone.’
‘I saw him coming away from the house.’
‘Then you would believe it,’ said Priscilla.
‘Does he often honour you in that way?’
‘No, very seldom,’ said Susan.
‘It is sad to think he is now a childless man.’
‘He said that of himself,’ said Lester.
‘Did he?’ said Ridley, with a look of interest.
‘Does it strike you as a curious thing to say?’
‘I can hardly imagine our friend, Sir Jesse, making such an intimate statement.’
‘The news had leaked out,’ said Priscilla.
Ridley threw back his head and went into laughter.
‘I wish I could have relied upon that process for making it known to the family. But it fell to me to reveal it by a more exacting method, by word of mouth.’ His tone became grave as he ended.
‘It must have been a hard moment for everyone,’ said Susan.
‘But I had my reward in the courage and resolution displayed by them all,’ went on Ridley, ‘especially by the chief character in the scene, Eleanor Sullivan. She indeed rose to the heights. No yielding to personal feeling or thought of self. A calm, firm advance into the future. It was an impressive thing.’
‘She will have a difficult life,’ said Lester.
‘Lester, it seems almost too much,’ said Ridley, turning in sudden feeling. ‘It seems that something should be done to ease so great a burden.’
‘She has three grown-up children.’
‘And the word relegates them to their position, points out how much and how little they can do. To her they are her children. Nothing can make them less; nothing can add to their significance. Nothing alters the deep, essential, limited relation.’
‘She has her husband’s parents.’
‘Rather would I say, Lester, that they have her.’
‘So that is how Mother feels to us,’ said Priscilla. ‘I feel half-inclined to take her away from the chimneypiece.’
‘Leave her,’ said Ridley, in a rather dramatic manner, resting his eyes again on the photograph. ‘Nothing was further from me than to belittle the relation. She is your mother. You bear the traces of her lineaments. She is in her place.’
‘People say we are like her,’ said Susan.
‘That is what Ridley meant,’ said Priscilla.
‘I must leave you now,’ said Ridley, seeming not to hear the words,, and perhaps not doing so in the stress of his feelings. ‘My duties call me. I have more in these sad days. I hard
ly know why I came in. I happened to be passing.’
‘Why do people give that reason for calling?’ said Susan. ‘They can’t drop in on every acquaintance they pass.’
‘They imply that they would not call at the cost of any trouble,’ said Priscilla. ‘They mean to give the impression of not wanting much to come. And really they give one of wanting to come so much, that they are embarrassed by the strength of the feeling. Sir Jesse called because that was his intention. We will always call in that spirit.’
‘It is not like Ridley to call by himself on people of no place and parentage.’
‘He had his own reasons,’ said Lester.
Chapter Ten
‘Well, my boy, I must solicit your help,’ said Ridley, entering the Sullivans’ hall. ‘I have come to seek a moment with your grandfather.’
‘I don’t know where he is,’ said Gavin.
‘Can you find out for me?’
‘We never do find out things about him.’
‘Grandpa is in the library,’ said Honor, coming up. ‘Couldn’t you go and see him?’
‘So I am to beard the lion in his den.’
‘Grandpa is a big lion,’ said Nevill, pausing by the group. ‘He can roar very loud.’
‘He can at times,’ said Honor, making a mature grimace, and glancing to see if Ridley had had the advantage of it.
‘Do you often play in the hall?’ said the latter.
‘Sometimes when it is wet,’ said Gavin.
‘Shall I play at lions with you?’ said Ridley, looking at a skin on the floor, and seeming to be struck by an idea that would serve his own purpose.
‘Yes,’ said Honor and Gavin.
Nevill turned on his heel and toiled rapidly up the staircase, and paused at a secure height in anticipation of the success of the scene. Ridley put the skin over his head and ran in different directions, uttering threatening sounds and causing Honor and Gavin to leap aside with cries of joy and mirth. Nevill watched the action with bright, dilated eyes, and, when Ridley ran in his direction, fled farther upwards with piercing shrieks. Hatton descended in expostulation, and Miss Mitford in alarm, the latter not having distinguished between the notes of real and pleasurable terror in Nevill’s voice. Regan hustled forward in the same spirit as Hatton, and smiled upon Ridley in a rare benevolence.
‘I plead guilty, Lady Sullivan,’ said the latter, standing with outspread hands, and the rug in one of them. ‘I am caught red-handed.’
‘You have had a good game,’ said Regan, to the children.
‘We did while it went on,’ said Gavin.
‘I fear we do not receive encouragement to prolong it,’ said Ridley.
‘Grandma could hide behind the staircase,’ suggested Gavin.
‘He will kill the lion,’ said Nevill, coming tentatively down the stairs. ‘He won’t let it eat poor Grandma. He will kill it dead.’
‘There, it is dead,’ said Ridley, dropping the skin on the floor. ‘You see you have killed it.’
‘It is quite dead,’ said Nevill, in a regretful tone, descending the rest of the stairs and cautiously touching the skin with his foot, before trampling freely upon it. ‘But he will make it alive again.’
‘It was dead before,’ said Gavin.
‘But once it was alive. It was in a forest and could roar.’
‘It was in a jungle,’ said Honor.
‘A jungle,’ said Nevill, in reverent tone.
‘It is a lioness, not a lion,’ said Gavin. ‘It has no mane.’
‘It is really a tiger,’ said Honor.
‘Which is more fierce?’ said Nevill.
‘A tiger,’ said his sister.
‘Then it is a tiger, a great big tiger. No, it is a lion. A lion is more fierce.’
‘I fear I am in disgrace, Lady Sullivan,’ said Ridley. ‘And it is not a day when I should choose such a situation. I am here to make an appeal to your favour.’
‘He is a lion,’ said Nevill, thrusting his head under the rug and making a charge against Ridley as vigorous as possible, considering its weight.
‘I wish I could say the same of myself,’ said Ridley, gently repulsing the attack. ‘I am feeling the reverse of lion-hearted. I had come to ask a word with your husband, and my attention was distracted by these would-be inhabitants of the jungle. I fear I helped them to realize their ambition.’
‘It sounds as if you were easily distracted,’ said Regan.
‘So much did my errand mean to me, that I found myself postponing the risks that it involved.’
‘And how long do you want to keep on that line?’
‘No longer, if you will make it easy for me to do otherwise.’
Regan met his eyes in silence, not fulfilling this suggestion, and suddenly turned and led the way across the hall.
‘Poor Mr Ridley has to go and see Grandpa,’ said Nevill, with eyes of concern.
‘He wants to,’ said Gavin.
‘No, he didn’t like it.’
‘He said he did.’
‘Hints are in the air,’ said Honor, swinging one leg round the other. ‘Hatton and Mullet are big with them.’
‘What?’ said Gavin.
‘Hatton is big,’ said Nevill. ‘But not as big as Mullet. Hatton is rather big.’
‘A cloud no larger than a man’s hand,’ said Honor.
‘Why do you talk without saying anything?’ said Gavin. ‘It makes talking no good.’
‘All in its own time,’ said his sister.
‘You think you are grand,’ said Gavin, and ended the conversation.
The schoolroom party came down the stairs. James took a seat on the lowest step and opened a book; Isabel leaned against the balusters; Venice came up to Nevill with a view to his entertainment.
‘Why have you all come down?’ said Gavin.
‘We are to play in the hall, because we are not getting any exercise,’ said James, just raising his eyes.
Isabel laid her head on her arms, in personal discharge of the obligation.
‘There is something heavy in the atmosphere in these days,’ she said.
‘You have said it,’ said Honor, nodding.
‘Play at lions like Mr Ridley,’ said Nevill, struggling under the rug.
‘So that is what the noise was,’ said Isabel.
‘It sounded as if someone was hurt,’ said James, in an incidental tone.
‘The screams of the damned,’ said Honor.
‘Don’t let her talk like that,’ said Gavin, with a note of misery.
‘There are breakers ahead,’ said Honor.
Gavin walked up to her and gave her a kick.
‘Gavin, that is very unkind,’ said Venice. ‘And you should never kick a girl.’
‘Ought I to kick Nevill then?’
‘No,’ said Nevill, flying into Venice’s arms.
‘You must never be rough with girls, or boys younger than yourself.’
‘Then I can be rough with James.’
Honor went up to Gavin and returned the kick. He took no notice beyond rubbing his leg, and they resumed their normal relation.
‘They didn’t mean to hurt each other,’ said Nevill, withdrawing a long gaze.
Sir Jesse and Regan and Ridley came from the library, continuing their talk. They gave no attention to the children, who did nothing to attract it.
‘I shall always be grateful, Sir Jesse, for the hospitality of your house.’
‘You did not come here for your own purposes.’
‘I have confessed that I began to do so, as time passed. How many months is it since the death of your son?’
‘We know,’ said Regan. ‘And no one who does not, needs to be told.’
‘I do not forget what is due to the memory of a man who was my friend.’
‘He depended on you to be his,’ said Sir Jesse, in a grave manner.
‘And to the end of my power did I fulfil that trust,’ said Ridley, in a suddenly full tone. ‘If feelings arose to the overthro
w of a simple spirit of duty, I was helpless as a man and a friend. The emotions of manhood carried me away. I regret if my words are crude; I have no others.’
‘Why are they so?’ said Sir Jesse. ‘Things are not that, because they are simple. They need no doctoring.’
‘Eleanor was the wife of your son. She is the mother of your grandchildren. I have come to you and your wife, as those who stand in the place of her parents. I feel I have not been wrong.’
‘She has had no family since we have known her,’ said Regan. ‘There is no demand on her, or on her family means.’
‘We have not come to the discussion of such things.’
‘A fact does not need discussion. No doubt you know it.’
‘You came here in the service of our son,’ said Sir Jesse. ‘We continued to think of you as here in his interests. But I will leave our personal feelings; you are not concerned with them. I am prepared to wish you well. I desire no ill to befall you. I have been blind. I have not had my eyes on your life, but on my own.’
‘I am glad the last half-hour is over,’ said Ridley, speaking as if Sir Jesse’s words had been lighter than they had. ‘I have felt like a schoolboy making an awkward confession.’
‘A schoolboy does not often have to confess a thing like this,’ said Regan.
Ridley went into laughter, as though to propitiate Regan by appreciation of her words.
‘What do you think of having nine stepchildren?’ she said.
‘I hope I shall never forget they are your grandchildren.’
‘It would hardly matter if you did, as they will not.’
‘I suspect they will not indeed,’ said Ridley. ‘I should be the last person to recommend their doing so. Not that they would appear to me to be the greater loss. And that brings me to the point of asking permission to fetch the other person most concerned.’
Eleanor was with her three eldest children in their study, and came out, accompanied by them.
‘Well, my dear, we are to lose you,’ said Sir Jesse. ‘How much are we to lose with you?’
‘I knew that would be the point,’ said Eleanor.
‘We have our lives,’ said Regan. ‘You have given your minds to yours.’
‘They feel we have had them,’ said Sir Jesse. ‘But we have to get through the days we have left. We have a right to ask what remains to us.’
Parents and Children Page 23