“Hoity-toity, I suppose I can do what I like with my own fruit?” said the old lady sharply. “Draw the curtains before you go, Emily.”
When Letizia had retired with Miss Young, and the gilded antelopes and a generous handful of the wax fruit, the old lady bade Nancy draw up one of the great Venetian chairs. When her grandson’s wife was seated beside the bed, she asked her why she had come to Brigham.
Nancy gave her an account of her struggles for an engagement and told her about Bram’s death and that unuttered wish.
“He may have worried about your future,” said the old lady. “But it was never his wish that Letizia should be brought up here. Never! I know what that wish was.”
“You do?”
“He was wishing that he had become a Catholic. He used to write to me about it, and I’m afraid I was discouraging. It didn’t seem to me that there was any point in interrupting his career as a clown by turning religious somersaults as well. I’m sorry that it worried his peace at the last, but by now he is either at rest in an eternal dreamless enviable sleep or he has discovered that there really is a God and that He is neither a homicidal lunatic, nor a justice of the peace, nor even a disagreeable and moody old gentleman. I used to long to believe in Hell for the pleasure of one day seeing my late husband on the next gridiron to my own; but now I merely hope that, if there is another world, it will be large enough for me to avoid meeting him, and that, if he has wings, an all-merciful God will clip them and put him to play his harp where I shan’t ever hear the tune. But mostly I pray that I shall sleep, sleep, sleep for evermore. And so young Caleb objected to bring up my namesake? By the way, I’m glad you’ve not shrouded her in black.”
“I knew Bram wouldn’t like it,” Nancy explained.
“I loved that boy,” said the old lady gently. “You made him happy. And I can do nothing more useful than present his daughter with a pair of gilded antelopes.” Her sharp voice died away to a sigh of profound and tragic regret.
Nancy sat silent waiting for the old lady to continue.
“Of course, I could have written and warned you not to ask young Caleb for anything,” she suddenly began again in her high incisive voice. “But I wanted to see you. I wanted to see Letizia the second. I must die soon. So I didn’t attempt to stop your coming. And, as a matter of fact, you’ve arrived before I could have written to you. No, don’t hand your child over to young Caleb, girl. Just on sixty-six years ago my mother handed me over to old Caleb. I suppose she thought that she was doing the best thing for me. Or it may have been a kind of jealousy of my young life, who knows? Anyway she has been dead too long to bother about the reason for what she did. And at least I owe her French and Italian, so that with books I have been able to lead a life of my own. Letizia would hear no French or Italian in this house except from me. And even if I could count on a few more years of existence, what could I teach that child? Nothing, but my own cynicism, and that would be worse than nothing. No, you mustn’t hand her over to young Caleb. That would be in a way as wrong as what my mother did. Your duty is to educate her. Yes, you must educate her, girl, you must be sure that she is taught well. She seems to have personality. Educate her. She must not be stifled by young Caleb and those two poor crones I brought into this world. It would be a tragedy. I had another daughter, and I was not strong enough in those days to secure her happiness. Perhaps I was still hoping for my own. Perhaps in trying to shake myself free from my husband I did not fight hard enough for her. She ran away. She went utterly to the bad. She died of drink in a Paris asylum. Caterina Fuller! You may read of her in raffish memoirs of the Second Empire as one of the famous cocottes of the period. If my mother had not married me to Caleb, I daresay I should have gone to the bad myself. Or what the world calls bad. But how much worse my own respectable degradation! It was only after Caterina’s death that I ceased to lament my prison. It was as if the sentient, active part of me died with her. Thence onward I lived within myself. I amused myself by collecting bit by bit over many years the gewgaws by which you see me surrounded. They represent years of sharp practice in housekeeping. The only thing for which I may thank God sincerely is that I wasn’t married to young Caleb. I should never have succeeded in cheating him out of a penny on the household bills. I should never have managed to buy a solitary novel, had he been my accountant. I should have remained for ever what I was when I married, raw, noisy, impudent, scatterbrained, until I died as a bird dies, beating its wings against the cage. Educate Letizia, educate her. I wish I had a little money. I have no means of getting any now. I had some, but I spent it on myself, every penny of it. Don’t despair because you’ve not had an engagement since Christmas. It’s only early March. Mon dieu, I haven’t even a ring that you could pawn. But I don’t worry about you. I’m convinced you will be all right. Easy to say, yes. But I say it with belief, and that isn’t so easy. I shall live on for a few weeks yet, and I know that I shall have good news from you before I die.”