"I suppose she has changed her mind. They are always changing their minds at her age."
His voice had grown stronger, Mrs. Archbald noticed with satisfaction, while she put down her work and reached out her hand for the goblet. When he had given it to her, she picked up a spoon and put a scrap of ice flavoured with sugar and brandy into her mouth. "I thought Isabella was coming in with you," she said presently, sucking the ice with enjoyment. "This is her cook's afternoon off."
"She said something about the baby. I didn't pay much attention."
Mrs. Archbald edged her chair nearer the sofa. "Don't you remember my telling you, Father, that I believed the Crockers were more quiet than plain? I always thought there must be good blood somewhere."
"I remember, my dear. You thought there was good blood in Joseph's nose."
"Well, I was right. There is." Mrs. Archbald was sprightly, for she could see a joke, but firm also, for she was defying a precedent. "I've had several genealogists look up Joseph's family. Those experts charge a great deal, but it is wonderful what they are able to find out from old records."
"What have they found out this time?"
"For one thing," her tone was impressive, "the first Joseph Crocker came over in 1635 and settled in James City County. He must have been Joseph's earliest American ancestor. It isn't likely there should have been two Crockers of that name, and it is more than probable that Joseph's family was a branch of the real Crockers."
"As real as any, I imagine, but what did the first Joseph do after he came?"
"We've nothing yet but the name. That is most important, and it seems better to go slowly about everything else. Of course the family must have had many reverses, and I imagine they were always quiet people, and very devout. More like Puritans than Cavaliers. Not that it really matters. It does seem funny," she added brightly, "that the less religion people have, the more they seem to desire it in their ancestors. It is so distinguished, I suppose, to lose it. That is what everybody understands about Joseph. But even allowing for the gap where the county records were lost or burned in the war, the descent is all perfectly clear. Then an English genealogist wrote me that he had traced Joseph's descent, through the distaff side, from one of the barons of Runnemede. It is all very interesting; but I am not sure that the information is worth as much as he asks. We never bothered about our family tree, did we?"
"Only to lop off decayed branches. It might, however, be worth more if Joseph is able to convince Isabella that she married above her."
"Oh, I haven't told Isabella! She would only make fun of it and ask me to spend the money on little Erminia's teeth. But I'm doing it all for Erminia. Isabella is so lacking in class feeling that Erminia is sure to have too much of it. When she grows up she may want to join the 'Daughters of the Barons of Runnemede' through her father's line. The world moves that way."
"Yes, I've noticed it in other matters, particularly in the profession of law."
"It is strange, though, about families," Mrs. Archbald observed, as she rose and swept up the spools and scraps from the desk. "I mean the way they go down and come up again. Every one thinks the Crockers' family history has been most extraordinary." Small, bright-eyed, very erect, she stood with her work-bag in her arms waiting to help him to his feet.
"After all, we're stronger than I thought, Cora. I feared that noblesse oblige had been exhausted by Breverton Goddard. It is still true, however, that the only real test of importance is to fly in the face of it."
"I know you think it ridiculous, Father, but there is little Erminia--"
The old man smiled at her perplexity. He knew her mind as well as she knew it herself, perhaps better, and he had often wondered how so good a woman could have so little regard for truth. There wasn't a kinder person on earth; but if she ever spoke the truth, it was by accident, or on one of those rare occasions when truth is more pleasant than fiction. Not that he distrusted her now. Her documents were in order, no doubt, and the deception in this particular instance resided, he suspected, in record or even in genealogy. No, it was the way her higher nature lent itself to deceit that amused his intelligence while it exasperated his conscience. Had it been her lower nature, he thought whimsically, one might become more easily reconciled. But because she was charitable and benign, her dissembling became, in some incredible fashion, the servant of goodness. How much innocent pleasure had she conferred, how much painful embarrassment had she relieved! Even when she had stood between him and happiness, he had never doubted that she was ruining his old age from the noblest motives. Yet what is goodness, he asked himself, with a flash of penetration, and how do we recognize it when it appears? If it exists at all, pure goodness must be superior to truth, superior even to chastity. It must be not a cardinal but an ultimate virtue.
Rising very slowly, as if his joints were brittle, he balanced his weight without taking the hand Mrs. Archbald stretched toward him. From the centre of the floral design, William looked up and thumped his tail three times on the carpet. He also had grown stiff in the joints, and he realized that, since the dinner hour was approaching, the separation would be only a brief one.
"Shall I call Robert?" Mrs. Archbald asked, and her tone was full of solicitude.
"No, I can manage the stairs by myself. He is probably waiting for me. All I need to make me young again, my dear, as I've told you so often before, is a new pair of legs." He crossed the room, and holding firmly to the back of a Queen Anne chair, looked round at her. Was there something he had forgotten? Or did his slowness mean that he was too tired to walk upstairs by himself?
"Father," her voice was cheerful but pleading, "won't you let me call Robert?"
"No, my dear, there is nothing the matter. Only," his brow wrinkled in annoyance, "I remembered that I'd forgotten to ask after Etta."
"She had a bad morning, poor thing, but the doctor gave her codeine, and that relieved the pain in her head. I told Clayton to take her dinner up a little early. She so often feels better after she eats something. Doctor Pembroke thinks her headaches come from sinus trouble, and he is treating her every day."
"I'll stop to speak to her as I go by."
"Wouldn't you rather wait till after dinner? You will feel stronger then."
"Well, I'll see. I'll see." Yes, she was right—she was usually right—he needed the unfailing solace of food. After dinner, he would feel braced, he would feel replenished in courage.
As he reached the head of the stairs, Jenny Blair, in a new dress of rose-coloured chiffon, ran out of her room. "Aren't you coming down, Grandfather? I thought I was late."
"In a minute, my dear. Run ahead."
"I wish our house had a place downstairs where you could wash your hands and brush your hair. The Peytons have one."
"Well, I don't envy them. I like where I've lived and the ways I'm used to. I don't mind the stairs, but I miss the feeling of my old velvet jacket." And he thought, as he watched her flitting down the stairs, "The child grows prettier every day. That rose-coloured frock gives her the glow she needs." Soft, starry-eyed, with a centre of inscrutable mystery, she slipped away from him, while he said to himself, "The poets are right. Nothing in life is so precious as innocence."
Glancing through Etta's half-open door, he saw that she had pushed aside her dinner-tray, and was reading a book with a yellow cover by the light on the candlestand.
"Don't you find that reading makes your head worse, my child?" he asked, pausing a moment.