"Wait." I caught her arm. "Here comes someone else." A door from the corridor had opened and shut, and sharp heels clicked down the aisle next to ours. The lights blinked out entirely for two seconds; in the pause one heard a surge from the crowd outside. The clicking hesitated also, then resumed with the light. But I laid a finger to my lips and drew Anastasia two steps back into our aisle, because while the sound bespoke a woman's tread, it called to my mind the clickish voice of Harold Bray, and I wanted a moment to consider a half-formed notion that accompanied his hateful image: the texts of his false Certificates were cited by their bearers as coming not simply from the Old or New Syllabus, but specifically from the Founder's Scroll; assuredly there were transcriptions of the document which he might have consulted, but my antipathy put nothing past him. If one began with the assumption that he was a fraud and then looked for the motive of his imposture, it seemed far from unimaginable to me that he might make use of his position to deliver secret information to the Nikolayans, for example, or to steal a priceless treasure like the Founder's Scroll…
The interloper — in fact a female person of a certain age — emerged now into the center; Anastasia left off regarding me quizzically and smiled.
"Come on: it's Mom."
She would have hailed or gone to her, but when the elder woman paused beside the case at sound of us and peered to see who we were, adjusting a pencil in her silver hair, light flashed from the point-cornered lenses of her eyeglasses. I gripped Anastasia's arm and very nearly swooned.
"Founder Omniscient!" I groaned, and ran with chill perspiration; was obliged to squat and feign interest in a low drawer of cards until I mastered my shivering. No mistaking her: it was Lady Creamhair, however drawn and silvered by unhappy terms!
Anastasia bent to me, frightened. "What is it, George?" I shook my head. Lady Creamhair's eyes — Virginia Hector's, it staggered me to understand! — had evidently not improved since our dim dear days in the hemlock-grove; seeing nothing familiar about us or untoward, she went on to her office.
"You're sure that's Virginia Hector, Anastasia?"
"Of course it is! What on campus — "
"And… she's your mother?" I leaned against the cardfile for support.
"Our mother, I hope!" She drew me hubwards. "Let's find out for sure, before she goes off somewhere."
But I held back yet a moment, flabbergast with memory and surprise. Poor dear Creamie! How I understood now your unwillingness to meet my keeper, or tell me your name; how I trembled at your old interest in me, your yen to pluck me from the herd, and — Founder, Founder! — your appall at my lust to Be, that drove you watchless from the grove!
"Anastasia…" I could scarcely speak. It was the empty Scroll-case now I leaned on, and drew her to me. Dutifully she resisted — until assured that it was a brotherly embrace. "I won't explain now, but… I've known that lady before, and I–I really think that you and I might be twins."
She hugged me enthusiastically — confounding my poor blood, which knew no longer what permissibly might rouse it. I suggested then that the shock of seeing me after so many terms might do her mother — our mother! — more harm than good unless properly prepared for; we agreed that Anastasia would go to her at first alone, draw her out upon the matters of our twinship and paternity while I listened from the doorway, and gently then introduce the facts of our acquaintance and my presence in the College proper. If Miss Hector found the news too distressing, I could present myself another time; if not, Anastasia would summon and introduce me. I stationed myself outside the door, and Anastasia knocked.
"Come in, please? Oh, it's you, dear."
I closed my eyes; her voice had still the querulous resolve in it that had fetched me in kiddish fury once at the fence, and soothed my adolescent stormings in the hemlock. Anastasia greeted her with a cheeriness perhaps exaggerated by the situation, declaring that she had a few daughterly matters to discuss, and that it had anyhow been too long since they'd last chatted.
"Oh. Well. Yes. Well. All this commotion lately…" Lady Creamhair clucked and fussed, not incordially, but as if permanently rattled. She seemed indeed in less possession of her faculties than formerly, and with rue I wondered how much hurt my ignorant assault might have done her. The two women exchanged commonplaces for a while — rather formally it seemed to me, for a mother and daughter, but at least with none of the ill-will that had rejected Anastasia in her childhood. Then presently, with apologies for "bringing up a sore subject," Anastasia declared that the recent appearance in New Tammany of two claimants to the title of Grand Tutor had revived many people's curiosity about the old Cum Laude Project and brought up again the unhappy matters of the "Hector scandal" and her illegitimate paternity —
"That's nobody's business," I heard Virginia Hector say firmly. From the sound I guessed that Anastasia went to embrace her then and declared affectionately that indeed it wasn't the business of anyone outside the family; but that she herself, of age now and a married woman, was surely entitled to the whole truth of her begetting.
"You know I've always loved you, Mother, and you must know it doesn't matter to me what the truth is; I just want to get it straight! One person comes along and says Dr. Eierkopf's my father — "
"Ha," Miss Hector said scornfully.
"— then another person says it's Dr. Spielman — "
The import of her "Hmp" at mention of this name I could not assess, though I listened closely.
"And you've said different things at different times yourself," Anastasia went on. "Even that I'm not your daughter…" Her voice grew less steady.
"Oh, now," Virginia Hector said. Anastasia repeated that her affection for her mother could not be diminished by the facts, whatever they were — at least she began to repeat some such sentiment, but was overtaken midway by tears.
"Now, now, now…" So like was that voice to the one that had gentled my two-score weepings in terms gone by, I could have wept again at sound of it. I yearned to burst in and beg my Lady Creamhair's pardon; must press my forehead to the frosted door-glass to calm me. Some minutes the ladies wept together. Then there was a snap of purses and blow of noses upon tissues, after which Virginia Hector said: "I have much to be forgiven, dear, Founder knows… No, no, don't be so kind; you've every right to hate me for the way I behaved when you were little. I flunk myself a hundred times over just to remember it, and when I think of you married to that beast…"
The thought brought more tears, as well it might, despite Anastasia's reassurances that none but herself was accountable for her choice of husbands. Happily, Miss Hector seemed unaware of the details of her daughter's life, before as well as after marriage, understanding only in a general way that it was less than serene and respectable. She was able therefore to recompose herself sooner than she doubtless would have had she known the hard particulars of Anastasia's history.
"I was awfully upset, you know," she went on presently, referring to the period of her daughter's infancy. "You can't imagine how it is to know that nobody will ever believe the truth, no matter what. Not even you. Not even now…"
Anastasia vowed she would, if only her mother would produce it; and so, after a number of unconvinced hums and clucks, Virginia Hector said clearly, almost wryly: "The truth is, I have never in my life… gone all the way with a man. Not once, to this day."