Seeing the pain in Max's countenance, she changed the subject brightly: "As for Uncle Ira, he was sweet as could be! Not a bit like you think! I didn't see him very much, he's so busy all the time, and he pretends to be such an old bear: but I'd slip into his study and climb up on his lap and kiss him, or hold my hands over his eyes — even when I was big I used to do it — and he'd have to laugh and kiss me before I'd go away. And every night he'd come up to make sure I got my bath, and tuck in my covers — he never would let the nurse do it. And talk about careful, when I was old enough to go out with boys! He was an orphan himself, you know, and grew up practically on the streets; he told me his mother was taken advantage of by a bad man who talked her into leaving Grandpa Reg and him when they were kids, and he had to take care of Grandpa Reg when he was just a little boy himself, selling old books off a pushcart on the Mall. I guess he'd seen so many bad things in his life, especially young girls being taken advantage of — anyhow he wouldn't let me go out with boys at all. It wasn't he didn't trust me; it was the boys he didn't trust, even the nice ones. He said he knew what it was they were after, whether they knew it or not, and even if they'd never thought of trying to take advantage of me, they'd think of it soon enough when I was alone with them. Stupid me, I hardly knew what a boy was, much less what Uncle Ira was talking about; I used to come in and perch on his lap and pester the poor man to death, to tell me what was so awful that the boys would do. He'd try to put me off, and tell me I was getting too big to sit on his lap like that; but I wouldn't take no for an answer…"
"I hate this," Max said.
"I know what you're thinking; just what Maurice says. But you've got to remember he was a lonely old man, and worried to death that the same thing would happen to me that had happened to his mother and his niece and all those girls in his hospital. And even if it wasn't completely innocent, I'm sure he thought it was; he was probably fooling himself the way he said those nice boys were, that he drove away from the house when they tried to make dates with me. If I'd had a grain of sense I'd have thought of some better way to handle him, without hurting his feelings; but I was so dumb, and naturally I was curious, too, when he tried to show me what was what."
Here I interrupted to protest that I didn't understand what was being alluded to, and thus had no way of judging how it bore upon the question of her marriage. Anastasia looked at me curiously, and Max reminded her that I too had been raised in isolation from normal campus family life, if not exactly in the same ignorance of natural facts.
"But don't tell us what's none of our business," he added; "it was just about you and Stoker we wondered."
I was ready to protest that I regarded it as quite my business (without knowing exactly why) to right or avenge any wrongs done to those whom I — well, esteemed — as I esteemed Max himself, and had vowed to clear his name. But the protest was unnecessary; Anastasia declared she felt obliged to speak in more frank detail than normally one might: first, because we might else misjudge her Uncle Ira's motives; second, because these incidents from her early youth were not unrelated to her subsequent marriage; and third, because if I was indeed a Grand Tutor, it was not hers to decide what ought to be told me and what ought not, but rather to open her heart trustingly and completely as she did in her nightly petitions to the Founder, without whose forgiving comfort and understanding she would long since have perished under the burden of misconstruction put upon her actions by her husband and others. The memory of these same misconstructions, presumably, brought tears to her eyes: I could not imagine a face more piteously appealing.
"I never mean to hurt anybody!" she said. "It says in the Scroll that Love is the Founder, and all I ever mean to do is help people, like in the Infirmary and the Psych Clinic. How can you help them except to find out what it is they need and then give it to them, if you have it? But it always seems to do damage somehow, when I do it!"
"Now pfui on that," Max consoled her, and I too declared it unthinkable that so generous a heart could do other than good.
"Well, take that time in Uncle Ira's study…" She was clearly encouraged by our words, though her expression remained doubting. "He said in a way he thought of me as his daughter and in a way he didn't, and I naturally supposed he meant because he was really my great-uncle instead of my father. So when he started explaining what it was the boys wanted, there was no reason to think he wasn't just trying to help me. I still think he was; I know he was, even later on! He'd been working on some accounts that night, as usual, and there were double-entry ledger-sheets spread on his desk; when he drew some pictures on them for me, to show me what he was talking about, I was a little upset, but he had to do something like that because I was so stupid. But he couldn't draw right, he said so himself: the people in the pictures had the funniest expressions on their faces! I told him if his drawing of the girl's parts was right, then there must be something wrong with mine, the proportions were all different; but I said I was pretty sure mine must be okay because they were just like Miss Fine's, my language-tutor's, and when Miss Fine and I used to play with each other she always said mine were the nicest she'd ever seen."
Though her tone remained glib as a child's, Anastasia blushed furiously. Max also, but not I, though my blood pulsed.
"You see how dumb I was! I was going to show him then and there to make sure, in case Miss Fine had just been being polite, and I told him I couldn't for the life of me see why he was so angry at her, when my other tutors and governesses and maids had all done and said the same kind of things. I said if he promised not to be angry with Miss Fine I'd teach him all the games I'd learned to play — I liked him better than Miss Fine anyway, because she would bite sometimes; what's more he had whiskers, and I was sure they'd be fun — but I wasn't certain about men, he'd have to show me… He couldn't talk for a while: I thought he was shy, the way some of the maids were the first time I'd ask if I could play with them; I never dreamed what I was doing to the man. I even touched him…"
"Yi."
"Well," Anastasia said, "to make a long story short, he gave me a good spanking, big as I was, and fired all the tutors and maids except an old cook and housekeeper who weren't any fun to play with anyhow. After that he wouldn't trust anybody to teach me unless he was in the room too, and every night he'd lecture to me in his study about how flunkèd my tutors and maids had been. I'd agree, and try hard to believe it, but I just couldn't understand what was wrong with something so nice."
"I know what you mean!" I exclaimed, thinking of my own difficulties with moral education. "I'm still not sure I understand!"