XV
"Tell Joscelyn Dark I want to see her before she goes home, Ambrosine," ordered Aunt Becky.
Joscelyn had walked the short distance up from Bay Silver and intended to walk back. Palmer Dark had taken her mother and her Aunt Rachel home in his car. She felt that she had had about enough of Aunt Becky for one day, but she went back to the bedroom readily enough. After all, the poor old soul was not long for this world.
Aunt Becky was lying back on her pillows. She was gazing earnestly on a little old tintype hanging on the wall near her bed. The picture was not decorative. At least so Joscelyn thought. But then she did not see it with Aunt Becky's eyes. Joscelyn saw only a tubby pompous old man, with a fringe of whisker around his face, and a thin, scrawny little woman in a preposterous dress. Aunt Becky saw a big, hearty, high-coloured man whose abounding vitality brought a gust of life into every existence and a vivid-eyed girl whose wit and sly mirth had been the spice of every company she was in and whose love affairs were stimulating and piquant. Aunt Becky sighed as she turned to Joscelyn. The fire had gone out of her eyes, the sting out of her voice. She looked exactly what she was... a very old, very ill, very tired woman.
"Sit down, Joscelyn. You know, I've been lying here thinking how many people will be glad when I'm dead? And not one to be sorry. And it seems to me that I wish I'd lived a bit differently, Joscelyn. I've always taken my fun out of them... I haven't spared them... they're all afraid of me. I'm just an ogress to them. It WAS fun to watch them squirming. But now... I don't know. I've a devilish sort of feeling that I wish I'd been a kind, gentle, stingless creature like... well, like Annette Dark, for instance. Everybody was sorry when she died... though she never said a clever thing in her life. But she was smart enough to die before she got too old. Women should, Joscelyn. I've sat up too late. Nobody will miss me."
Joscelyn looked levelly at Aunt Becky. She knew that what Aunt Becky said was true enough in a way. And she sensed the secret bitterness in the old woman's soul behind all her satire and bravado. She wanted to comfort her without telling a lie. Joscelyn could neither tell nor live a lie... which was what had made a clan existence hard for her.
"I think, Aunt Becky, that every one of us will miss you a great deal more than you suppose we will... a great deal more than we imagine ourselves. You're like... like mustard. Sometimes you bite... and a big dose of you IS rather awful... "
"As to-day, for example," interjected Aunt Becky with a faint grin.
"But you DO give a tang to things. They'd be flat without you. And you seem like... I don't know how to put it... the very essence of Dark and Penhallow. We won't be half so much a clan when you're gone. You've always made history for us somehow. If this had been an ordinary afternoon... if we'd come here and you'd been nice to us... "
"And fed you... "
"We'd have all gone away and forgotten the afternoon. There'd be nothing in it to remember. But this afternoon WILL be remembered... and talked about. When the girls are old women they'll tell their grandchildren about it... you'll live by it fifty years after you're in your grave, Aunt Becky."
"I HAVE often thought it would be a frightfully dull world if everybody were perfectly good and sweet," conceded Aunt Becky. "I guess it's only because I'm tired that I'm wishing I'd been more like Annette. She was as sweet and good and unexciting as they make 'em. She never said a naughty word in her life. And I was far handsomer than she was, mind you. But Crosby loved HER. Now, Joscelyn, here's a queer thing. You heard what I said to-day. There was a time I'd have given my soul if Crosby had loved me... I'd have given and done anything... except be like Annette. Not even for Crosby would I have been willing to be like Annette... even though now I'm getting childish and wishing I had been. I'd rather sting people than bore them, after all. But... "
Aunt Becky paused and looked earnestly at Joscelyn. Joscelyn had held her own well. She was very good-looking. The evening light, falling through the window behind her, made a tremulous primrose nimbus around her shapely head. But her eyes... Aunt Becky wanted to solve the haunting mystery of Joscelyn's eyes.
"I didn't keep you here to talk about my own feelings. I'm going to die. And I'm not afraid of death. Isn't it strange? I was once so afraid of it. But before I die I want to ask you something. I've never asked you before... do me that justice. What went wrong between you and Hugh?"
Joscelyn started... flushed... paled... almost rose from her chair.
"No... sit down. I'm not going to try to make you tell if you don't want to. It isn't curiosity, Joscelyn. I'm done with that. I feel I'd just like to know the truth before I die. I remember your wedding. Hugh was the happiest-looking groom I ever saw. And you seemed very well pleased with yourself, too... when you came in first, at least. I remember thinking you were made for each other... the sort of people who should marry... and found a home... and have children. And I WOULD like to know what wrecked it all."
Joscelyn sat silent a few minutes longer. Oddly enough, she was conscious of a strange desire to tell Aunt Becky everything. Aunt Becky would understand... she was sure Aunt Becky would understand. For ten years she had lived in an atmosphere of misunderstanding and disapproval and suspicion. She had not minded it, she thought... the inner flame which irradiated life had been her protection. But to-day she felt oddly that she HAD, after all, minded it more than she had supposed. There was a soreness in her spirit that seemed old, not new. She WOULD tell Aunt Becky. No one else would ever know. It was a confidence to the grave itself. And it might help her... heal her. She bent forward and began to speak in a low, intense voice. Aunt Becky lay and listened movelessly until Joscelyn had finished.
"So that was it," she said, when the passionate voice had ceased. "Something none of us ever thought of. I never thought of it. I thought perhaps it was something quite small. So many of the tragedies of life come from little, silly, ridiculous things. Nobody ever knew why Roger Penhallow hanged himself forty years ago... nobody but me. He did it because he was eighteen years old and his father SPANKED him. Ah, the things I know of this clan! All the things I said to-day were things every one knows. But I didn't say a word about scores of things nobody dreams I know. But weren't you very cruel, Joscelyn?"
"What else could I have done?" said Joscelyn. "I COULDN'T have done anything else."
"Not with that Spanish blood in you, I suppose. At least we'll blame it on the Spanish blood. Everything that isn't right in your branch of the Penhallows is laid at the door of that Spanish blood. Peter Penhallow and his hurry to be born, for instance. It must be the Spanish blood that makes you all fall in love with such terrible suddenness. Most of Captain Martin's descendants have been lovers at sight or not at all. I thought you'd escaped THAT curse... Hugh took so long courting you. Have you ever felt sorry you did it, Joscelyn?"
"No... no... no," cried Joscelyn.
"Two 'no's' too many," said Aunt Becky.
"I want to tell you the exact truth," said Joscelyn slowly. "It is quite true... I've never been sorry I DID do it. You can't be sorry you did a thing you HAVE to do. But I have been sorry... not many times but all the time... that I HAD to do it. I didn't want to do it. I didn't want to hurt Hugh like that... and I DID want to have Treewoofe. I want it yet... you don't know how much I want Treewoofe... and all the lovely life I had planned to have there. It was dreadful to have to give it up. But I couldn't do anything else, Aunt Becky... I COULDN'T."
"Well, God bless you, child. The less we say about it the better. You'll probably hate me tonight because you've told me this. You'll feel I tricked you into it by being old and pitiful."